Heavy Lies The Crown (The Scalussen Chronicles Book 2)

by Ben Galley

  ‘I swear it, Flocklord! Bright white fire!’

  Boorin slapped the man around his leather cap. ‘By Dawn, I don’t want to hear about it! Ever since that bloody dragon appeared you’ve been skittish as lambs. This is the third time this week you lot have seen something out there. What was it last time? A strange-looking cloud? Bleeding Dawn!’

  ‘Yes, Flocklord,’ muttered the guard. The others around them upon the small tower beside the ogin bone gate bowed their heads. ‘We’re sorry to bother you.’

  As the sound of a bleating sheep somewhere below, Boorin took one last look across the dark plains. He blinked, cursing his tired eyes. Between the driving curtains of rain, he swore he had seen the shape of an enormous wolf. He pushed a guard out of his way to stare out across the wooden battlements.

  ‘Close the gates!’ he screamed, more high-pitched than he would have liked in front of his men, but a huge black wolf sprinting towards his town was enough to choke him with fear.

  ‘Close the fucking gates!’

  Boorin began to flee. The steps were awash with rain. He clattered down them on his arse and squelched into the mud on his arse.

  The curved doors between the ogin bone were still ajar when the wolf’s snout crashed through them. Several guards tried to brace the gates, more in blind hope than in bravery. The wolf overpowered them in moments. Figures in dark and ragged robes swarmed through the rain, some screeching, others cackling, and others still methodically murderous. Puddles ran red as their swords went to work.

  Fire turned the night to day as the guard tower was blown asunder in fire and lightning. Boorin was thrown against a wall by the blast. Those who hadn’t heard the screams and shouts over the storm now flooded from the safety of their houses in confusion.

  ‘Dragon!’ some fool shouted. It mattered little that he was wrong. Lilerosk was soon drowned in panic as another of the wolves bounded clear over the wall. It broke a wooden shack clean in two as it crash-landed.

  Boorin saw people thrown into the air, only to be snapped up by the wolves or to collapse heavy into mud or burning houses. He shoved himself up only to find his arm was broken. He was crawling with his elbows in the muck and sheep-shit when he saw the ogin bones cartwheel either side of him. One flattened the front of a tavern while the other turned a trapped crowd of shepherds into a bloody mess.

  The flocklord turned around to see what evil had brought such ruin to his town. In his fear-addled mind, he stared upon the foul Dusk God himself: a figure cloaked in fire. Lightning forked from his spread hands. White script burned through his drenched wrappings and cloak. Death walked ahead of him. Destruction and fire he left behind him.

  Boorin babbled every prayer he knew in a constant shrieking stream as the hulking figure approached. He was no man, no monster, but trapped somewhere between. The flocklord was ready to denounce Dawn itself when the grinning face of glowing white runes stared down at him. Boorin prostrated himself in the mud before him.

  ‘I beg of you, my lord… my god… please spare me!’ he cried.

  The voice was deep and coarse. ‘A man came here not too long ago. Of black hair and red-gold armour. There would have been others with him.’

  Boorin clung forlornly to the possibility of salvation through correct answers. ‘He did, lord. They betrayed us and we cast them out. Fiends, they were!’

  A hand of searing heat alighted on Boorin’s head. He quivered beneath it, trying to ignore the pain. ‘But who welcomed them in the first place?’ said the voice.

  ‘I… I did?’ Boorin gasped. ‘Who are you, m—my lord?’

  ‘I am death.’

  Boorin’s scream was short-lived as the fire consumed his skull, and lightning scorched him to his bones.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE LAST BREATH OF SIGRIMUR

  Daemonblood was a leftover from the wars of the world’s formation. The loathsome creatures that escaped being turned to stars slunk into the darkness, and as heroes slew them one by one, a healer of unknown name discovered the curious properties of daemon’s blood. Life and health, it bestows, even regrowing limbs, so long as one is able to stomach its initial effects. And, of course, its crippling addiction. Most that try to cut themselves off from daemonblood’s temptation usually end up dying writhing in pain.

  FROM THE DIARY OF DURNUS GLASSREN, YEAR 903

  Aspala pivoted on her heel. The whip cracked over her head. Breathless, she lashed out with her sword, slicing the blade from the whip. She seized it as she burst from the mud. Mercilessly, her opponent whipped at her with the remaining coil. Aspala’s arm was cut to ribbons by the time she slid past the bitch on her knees, and sliced the backs of her legs to the bone.

  Down came the boulder of a woman. Aspala finished her off quickly this time with her own whip-blade. She had learned. After all, this was the third time the queen had forced her to fight that morning. Before every bout, Mithrid had caught Peskora gloating in their direction. And every time Aspala had won, the queen had grown a shade redder.

  Aspala raised her fingers to the crowd as she limped defiantly back to her cell. Her fleeting look to the balcony was too far away to discern, but Mithrid felt it stab her in the gut.

  ‘Aspala can’t take another fight! Where is Farden? Whatever he’s planning, he better be doing it now.’

  Irien had been watching the High Cathak since the third day of Tourney began. She watched him now even as she replied. The man looked livid that Farden had been absent half the morning.

  ‘Below us, with Krugis the smith,’ she said.

  ‘Farden knows what is at stake. He is not heartless.’ Durnus gripped the railing so hard Mithrid could make out every bones in his hands.

  ‘He needs the armour as much as we need him, Mithrid.’

  Farden drummed his fingers on the blacksmith’s bench. Gods did he need to piss, but there was no time now. The announcer’s voice – and now hoarse as a saw on stone – echoed through the underbelly, announcing Aspala’s third fight that morning.

  ‘That blasted queen,’ Farden muttered to himself. Peskora was throwing her weight around, fixing bouts to teach them a lesson for Farden’s indiscretion. The queen squeezed their time to a precious pinch of sand in the hourglass.

  Farden rapped his knuckles on the bench, looking for Krugis behind the mounds of armour and monstrous tools around his forge. ‘How’s it looking, smith?’

  The soot-painted man appeared, arms full of armour. ‘By the Dawn God, you’re a bastard, you know that? Barely begun to polish it.’

  ‘Fuck the polish. Is it fixed?’

  ‘As much as I could. Patched and reset the scales, fixed their fastenings. Most confounding stuff I ever did work on. Swore some of it moved around when I touched it, I swear. Now, there’s the matter of Irien’s promise…’ Krugis explained.

  Farden was not listening. He was pawing over his armour, checking, probing. The charring was gone. Almost all the scrapes and scratches, too. The metal was cold despite the heat of the forge.

  He put the vambraces on first. He slid them over his arms with haste. He didn’t even wait to add the gauntlets.

  Krugis’ jowls stopped flapping when he saw the metal scales flex and slither over each other as the pieces touched. Farden clenched his fist. The scales were less hesitant than before. None stuttered or scraped. He breathed a sigh of relief before snatching the other pieces and strapping himself into his armour one by one. The smith had even replaced the missing ruby eye of the wolf with a garnet.

  Krugis scratched his armpit. ‘As I said, your impatience don’t come cheap. Neither does working with such fine and intricate armour. Haven’t slept these past nights because of working on this. Put me behind in fact…’

  ‘Uhuh,’ Farden said. He felt the sweat gathering on his forehead despite the frigid metal. There was something that felt ghastly wrong. As if a piece of the armour was missing even though he counted it all.

  Even wearing all the metal but his helmet, Farden felt none of the
usual wintry touch seeping into his veins. The subtle magick of the Scalussen armour was missing. Farden felt his knees grow weak. Nausea swooped.

  ‘So I’m thinking another hundred silver leaves—’

  Farden slammed his fists on the bench. ‘You said you’d fixed this?’

  Krugis was immediately enraged. ‘Yessir! Every scale of metal on that damnable suit.’

  ‘I…’ Farden put gouges in the bench as he withdrew his fists. ‘Curse it!’ He had no time to vent. No time to deal with the dread seeping through him instead of the cold magick he so despairingly longed for.

  Farden began to run back to the Viscera.

  ‘There you are!’ Durnus cried as Farden emerged on the balcony, tired, sweating beneath his armour. ‘You look yourself again. Fixed?’

  ‘It’s almost time to go,’ Farden gasped, ignoring the question.

  ‘What in Hel we waiting for?’ Durnus demanded. Mithrid looked as though the same question burned a hole in her, too.

  Farden crossed his arms, quietly confident. ‘You’ll see. If I have the measure of this queen, as I think I do, you’ll see.’

  ‘And if you don’t?’

  ‘Presenting Rovisk Dal’Bvara against…’ The announcer had to pause to be heard over the booming cheer. It left a ringing in Farden’s ears.

  ‘Against the Warbringer of Efjar!’

  Farden nodded. ‘She’s going to regret this.’

  Irien did not look so convinced. ‘As much as I would love to see this outcome, and I truly would, I’ve never seen Rovisk lose a fight.’

  Mithrid snorted. ‘If I know Warbringer, I think you’re about to.’

  There was no strutting this time from Rovisk. Before he put on his helmet. Farden caught a furtive glance to the tower above, to his bed partner who had thrown him against this monster. The mage smirked. This kind of show he could enjoy.

  Say one thing for Rovisk; the man was fast. He evaded Warbringer’s first blows with a jump and a roll. Voidaran hit the mud so hard it sprayed in a great umbrella. Just long enough for Rovisk to unleash flurry of jabs, skewering the minotaur’s bicep and thigh. If the prince had fought in the Efjar Skirmishes, he would have known how thick a minotaur’s hide can be.

  Warbringer backhanded him so hard every person in the crowd could hear the snap of a metal. Shock stalled the complaints. The cries of mercy and insults for the beast from the west.

  Rovisk dragged off his broken helmet just in time to see Warbringer swinging Voidaran in a blur above her head. She let it go with a roar, and the hammer pulverised the wall Rovisk had just been leaning against. He managed another lucky strike, evading another fist and even nicking the top of one her horns as she bent to gore him. He even managed to score a deep cut across her chest, severing her necklace of bones and teeth.

  Warbringer bellowed in his face at the insult. All his bravery withered in a moment. It staggered him long enough to bring Voidaran sweeping in an arc that broke his sword at the hilt. Warbringer knew no mercy for this pompous knight. Pink-flesh, she no doubt growled at him.

  When she seized him by the breastplate and brought him close, the bastard swept a knife from his back. He managed to slash her face before Warbringer swatted the knife from his hand and shattered his arm at the same time. With her huge fist, she grabbed his throat and crushed it.

  Rovisk Dal’Bvara fell dead on the Viscera mud.

  It was the queen, shoving the announcer aside, who uttered the next bout without hesitation, before the servants could drag away his body. ‘Bring out Aspala of Paraia! She shall fight this creature next! And if she does not you may shoot her where she stands!’

  All across the Viscera, crossbowmen took aim.

  ‘Farden…’ Mithrid spoke in a low voice. ‘You’re not going to make them fight each other, are you?’

  Farden felt a laugh bubbling out of his chest. ‘Not at all, I just needed both of them out of their cages. It was only logical the queen would put our two friends against each other in time. She’s cruel enough, after all.’

  Mithrid’s open mouth gave no words. It took her a moment to find some. ‘I didn’t think about that.’

  A riot was brewing in the Viscera; the two fighters had touched weapons and taken a stand beside each other.

  ‘Fight, damn you!’ screeched Peskora.

  ‘Farden?’ Even Durnus was now growing cautious.

  Now, Fleetstar! Farden roared in his mind.

  Faint over above the booing and jeers of the thousands, Farden heard another commotion. Bells began to toll in the watchtowers of Vensk.

  Just in bloody time.

  Farden turned to the High Cathak, who was grinning at the supposed fate of Aspala and Warbringer. The bastard thought he had won, bless him.

  ‘Irien, if I may borrow your crossbow?’ Farden asked politely. The others watched intently, but he paused with his hands around her forearm. He looked expectantly up at the arse of Vensk. Screams in the highest row of spectators had begun to turn heads.

  ‘It’ll just be a moment,’ he said.

  No sooner had the words spilled from his mouth did a jet of orange flame explode over the roof of the arena. A white gold dragon spun fire in its wake as it appeared.

  Tartavor was powerless but to look at the dragon, and as soon as he did, Farden raised Irien’s arm, stared down the small bolt, and nodded. ‘If you please.’

  Irien fired with a deft squeeze of her fingers.

  A cry of pain could be heard over the screams of the audience. Tartavor stared aghast and gawking like an owl at the arrow stuck high in his chest. He fell amongst his fellow Cathak, much to their cries.

  ‘Now we go!’ Farden cried, having to drag Irien away from gawping at the dragon.

  Storm wind blasted them as Fleetstar swooped around the Viscera. She tackled the central tower with claws outstretched. The queen and her harem scattered before the crash of wood and masonry. Fleetstar snapped her fearsome jaws at soldiers until she had gnashed her way to the centre of the tower. There, she seized the cage containing Sigrimur’s head and let her wings send them sprawling. Two of the queen’s princes fell windmilling from the tower.

  Fleetstar pirouetted and swept low across the mud. She practically crashed into Warbringer and Aspala, but with them both in her claws, the dragon climbed into the sky. Fool soldiers fired their crossbows with no care for the crowds screaming beneath. Thousands swarmed and fought in all directions to be free of the chaos.

  It was over as abruptly as it had begun. Fleetstar escaped the arena to weave needlelike through the giant trees and left the Viscera reeling behind her.

  When Queen Peskora emerged from the rubble, fine silks ripped, caked in blood and dust, she arose with a shaking finger pointed towards that foul Irien’s balcony. But as she wiped her eyes and managed to peer through the smoke, she found the balcony abandoned. The strangers were already long gone.

  Farden and the others barged through the bustle as quickly as they could without running. Fortunately for them, they had left before the bulk of the crowds, but in the path of the dragon, the lowest levels of Vensk were aflame with panic.

  As soon as the cries of the Viscera were far enough behind them, they began to pound the cobbles in a mad dash for the river and the Ogin’s Ford. Beyond the trees, a gusty day of driving rain welcomed them. They held their hoods and hands up to avoid its cold sting.

  ‘I should have asked you to get us a carriage!’ Farden yelled.

  ‘Already ahead of you! I thought you might need to get to Sigrimur quickly. It’s a glorified wagon, to be precise.’

  Irien pointed at a man with two cows and a cart with canvas stretched over it waiting at the corner of the bridge. The man was already cowering from the skies, but at the sight of Warbringer, he scarpered in fear and left Irien to crack the whip and play driver. They were rattling across the cobbles in moments.

  The giant shape of Fleetstar skimmed the towers of the bridge. The whole carriage shook to one side, causing Irien to y
elp and the others to curse the dragon’s antics. Aspala’s howl could be heard clearly as Fleetstar winged her way to Dathazh with all haste.

  With Dathazh empty from the Scarlet Tourney, and with the wave of confusion only just breaking across the river, they raced through the city gates with not a challenge. Every head was craned to the sky. They followed the shout of, ‘Dragon!’ wherever they heard it.

  ‘We’re here!’ Irien yelled. Farden tumbled from the wagon alongside Mithrid. He quietly thanked the gods for his armour as he hauled himself up and into the narrow streets.

  Sigrimur’s Rest was practically abandoned. Rightly so, seeing as a dragon filled the space between the columns. Fleetstar looked cooped up and awkward, struggling not to knock over the statue with her claws or tail. A box was still clamped between her teeth. Aspala and Warbringer washed the water bloody as they waded to greet them. Aspala hung heavy in the minotaur’s claws. The cut across Warbringer’s brow and snout was crusted with blood. Her prized necklace of bones was clamped between her teeth.

  ‘Took your sweet time, Farden,’ Aspala complained.

  Farden and Mithrid held her other shoulder up while Durnus checked her wounds.

  ‘I’m sorry, Aspala,’ the mage breathed. She looked dreadful, but alive. ‘If it’s any consolation, you did yourself proud.’

  Aspala shook her head. ‘Did Paraia and Scalussen proud. Fuck that queen,’ she spat blood in the water.

  ‘Say it was not in vain,’ Warbringer rumbled.

  The cage met the flagstones with a gentle clang. Farden, Durnus, and Irien rushed to it. The dragon had already cracked it with her jaws. It was quick work to wrench the thing open. They should have built it sturdier instead of prettier.