Caylen nodded in agreement. “I scarcely trust Captain Aracus. But if there’s any truth to the legend of that jewelled city he’s been ranting about, I’m willing to risk the search.”
“Do you recall his tales of the southern continent? He claims he sailed for six weeks on a blood red sea and discovered an island of stone giants.”
Caylen produced a scrap of vellum parchment from a pouch at his belt and studied the crude map which had been etched into its yellowed surface. “And yet his charts have guided us here. To a mist-shrouded isle in the middle of a treacherous, ice-bound ocean.”
Guthlac scowled. “My guess is it’s all cryptic nonsense and mummery. The ravings of a madman.”
“Mayhap,” said Caylen, tucking the parchment back into his belt. “The old goat excels at that. He treats his wine cup like a scrying pool.”
“Well, I doubt this forlorn rock will offer up much of interest,” muttered Guthlac.
Caylen’s grey eyes narrowed. “We shall see.”
* * *
For an hour the party trekked in solemn silence, eventually cresting a low rise and emerging onto a great expanse of tundra which stretched for many hundreds of yards before them. The snow had begun to fall heavily and an icy wind swept in from the north, biting pitilessly through the men’s clothing and armour. Shielding his eyes against the whirling flurries, Caylen peered out across the niveous plateau at the black mountain range which continued to loom ever closer with each onerous mile they traversed. Then he muttered an oath and pulled his wolfskin cloak closer about his heavily muscled frame.
“Wolfclan,” came the low voice of Guthlac at his flank.
Caylen turned to see the swordsman staring intently off to the west, squinting through the amorphous veil of white which had all too swiftly engulfed the travellers on their journey.
“What is it?”
“That snow drift,” rumbled Guthlac, a note of grave concern in his tone. “Why is it moving towards us?”
Caylen followed his companion’s gaze, struggling to perceive a vague, dun-white shape which was all but obscured by the mounting blizzard. For several moments he stared fixedly at the nebulous apparition, his brow furrowing as it appeared to draw inexorably nearer. A heartbeat later, he hefted his frost-etched axe and bellowed furiously to his comrades. “Ice troll!”
The great beast barrelled into the armed men with a guttural howl of primal fury, its cruelly curved talons slashing murderously. The creature stood seven feet tall and was covered by a shaggy coat of matted white fur beneath which patches of pale blue skin were visible across its enormously muscled chest. Its slavering maw was studded with broad yellow fangs and its tiny eyes gleamed with feral rage. One of the reavers fell instantly beneath a pitiless blow from the troll’s colossal hand, the man’s blood spattering the virgin snow in a vivid blossom of crimson. Caylen barely evaded another sweep of the creature’s reddened claws, diving desperately to the frozen earth as the beast lumbered past him.
“Surround the fiend!” thundered Caylen. “Teach it to fear your blades, wolves of the sea!”
Guthlac ducked lithely beneath a furious swipe of the troll’s fist as the remaining reavers formed a wide ring around their savage foe, swords poised.
“Bring the devil down!” bellowed Caylen as he hefted his axe and charged into the fray. Instantly, the troll spun to face him, its teeth bared in a ferocious rictus grin. Raising its great sinewy limbs, the creature surged forward, intent on shattering Caylen’s skull with merciless blows from its adamantine fists. But the Wolf-King’s axe bit deep, opening a gaping red furrow in the beast’s abdomen as it lurched forward. Uttering an ear-splitting howl of pain and rage, the troll lashed out with its curved talons, rending Caylen’s scale-mail cuirass and scattering shards of burnished metal to the snow. Reeling backwards momentarily, Caylen raised his bloodied axe and smiled mirthlessly. “Never sweet, the kiss of cold steel,” he hissed.
Instantly, the reavers vaulted forward to press the attack, their blades hacking into the wounded beast’s alabastrine hide. The troll fell swiftly before the merciless onslaught of swords and axes, crumpling to the snow whereupon a final blow from Guthlac’s longsword finally brought the desperate battle to a sanguineous close.
“It’s been a while since I faced a troll,” Caylen said, unbuckling his riven cuirass and casting it to the snow beside the fallen beast. “I had nearly forgotten the joy of such a clash!”
“Hrolf found no joy in it,” Guthlac muttered, moving to the body of their fallen comrade.
“No, he did not,” said Caylen grimly. “But he died in battle, and a warrior can ask for no more. Gather stones and we shall bury him as best we can in this frozen earth, so that his body is not defiled by such scavengers as may prowl this atoll.”
Silently, the men set about their solemn task. The snow had ceased to fall and yet the faint orb of the sun still cast scant little light and warmth from behind the impenetrable veil of grey which enshrouded the hiemal sky.
Caylen silently adjusted his wolfskin cloak about his unadorned frame. His broad shoulders were scored with azure knotwork tattoos and his scarred and powerfully muscled chest heaved as he vigorously inhaled the icy air.
Guthlac moved to stand at his side. “Aren’t you cold?”
“I am never cold,” grinned Caylen. “I’m the Wolf of the North.”
Guthlac smirked. “Of that I’m sure. Do we press on, or return to the ship?”
“Those black mountains yonder remain our destination. We’ll decide our path when we stand in their shadow.”
Guthlac nodded sombrely. “What if the captain’s tale proves true? What if there is a dragon’s hoard of gems beyond those peaks?
Caylen’s grey eyes sparkled. “Then we sail home with enough loot to rival the golden princes of the east!”
“We’re more likely to end up as troll-fodder,” sighed Guthlac.
Caylen frowned and cast his gaze at the black peaks which loomed beyond the pearlescent expanse of unbroken snow. “Enough talk! We’ve precious few hours of sunlight left to us. We must not tarry here!”
And without a backward glance, the armed men resumed their solemn march towards the distant, shadowed mountains.
Chapter II
The Caverns of Ice and Shadow
At length, Caylen and the scouting party found themselves standing before the entrance to a colossal cave hewn into the jagged face of the bituminous mountain. Beyond the aperture gleamed a coruscant cavern of ice which ultimately yielded its glimmering radiance to a stygian void of deep and impenetrable shadow. The crude arch of the cave’s mouth boasted a series of strange sigils which had been carved into the surface of the black rock, although the language represented by the eldritch glyphs was as much a mystery to the assembled men as the unfathomably ancient hands which had surely etched them.
“Who’s going in first?” hissed Guthlac, his breath billowing from his lips in a dense cloud.
Caylen grinned. “The honour shall be mine.” And with that, he strode boldly across the frozen threshold and into the lambent grotto.
“I’m at your back,” muttered Guthlac.
“Keep watch for more of those shaggy brutes,” Caylen called to the mariners as they followed him warily into cave’s embrace.
Guthlac laughed mirthlessly. “What do you think I’ve been doing for the past hour?”
The cavern’s icy ceiling was studded with an array of slender, gleaming stalactites which imparted to the men the disquieting sensation that they were entering the toothsome maw of some colossal beast from primeval myth. The walls appeared strangely smooth, akin to polished glass, and it seemed to Caylen that they were gently aglow with a faint azure luminescence. For many pensive moments the reavers traversed the lucent cave in taut silence, their weapons at the ready, until at length they stood before an asperous barrier of fissured stone which boasted the rough-hewn entrances to two shadowed tunnels.
“Which path do we take?” whispered Guthl
ac, peering into the tenebrous darkness beyond the twin passageways.
In response, Caylen stepped warily across the threshold of the left-hand tunnel. Instantly, the silence was shattered by a grinding, clamorous din as the rimy stone abruptly crumbled beneath his feet. For what seemed an interminably lengthy span of time, Caylen tumbled arduously down a pitch black, ice-encrusted shaft, the jagged edges of the channel riving a score of shallow lacerations into his flesh. Finally, he struck level ground with a bone-jarring impact and clambered furiously to his feet, his axe still clutched firmly in his bloodied hands. Uttering a litany of curses, Caylen swiftly surveyed the chamber into which he had so onerously emerged. The grotto appeared akin to the sections of the cavern he had thus far explored, illumined by an identical sapphirean glow and glazed with walls of smooth, scintillant ice. The only marked difference that he could discern was that the frigid, rocky floor of this subterrane was littered with an array of sundered bones and skulls of varying sizes; evidently the fragmentary skeletal remnants of creatures both animal and vaguely human in origin. With a shudder not wholly induced by his icy environs, Caylen instantly realized that he was standing amidst the jagged, charnel vestiges of some ravenous beast’s savage repast.
“Gods curse my ill luck,” the clansman hissed, his fingers brushing the hammer-shaped amulet which encircled his bull-neck. “It’s the bloody larder!”
A low, ferine growl suddenly reverberated at his back and Caylen slowly turned to behold a hulking ice troll crouched not twelve feet from his position. With a grotesque leer, the sinewy, hirsute creature rose languorously to its full height, its eyes sparkling balefully in the grotto’s wan light. In its great clawed hand, the troll grasped a rudimentary club fashioned from the cracked and hoary thigh bone of some massive, primordial animal. With a cold smile, Caylen unbuckled his wolfskin cloak and let it fall to the cave floor before reverentially hefting his glimmering axe.
“So be it, devil,” he rumbled. “Let us test our mettle.”
The troll uttered a blood-chilling howl and charged forward, its great osseous mace held high. Still smiling, Caylen stood his ground and raised his axe to parry the tremendous blow, the resultant clash splintering the bone club into a thousand jagged shards. Vaulting lithely from the beast’s path, Caylen spun and brandished his rune-etched steel.
“Just like a troll,” he spat. “Bringing a bone to an axe fight!”
Furiously and with a speed belying its great size, the beast surged forward, its yellow fangs bared. Instantly, Caylen’s axe swept forth, opening a grievous furrow in the troll’s scabrous hide. Dark blood erupted from the wound, spattering the cavern floor like a sanguineous mosaic. But before Caylen could deliver another blow, the creature was upon him, its feculent claws sinking deep into his thews and scoring his flesh. With a guttural roar, the troll then dragged Caylen forward and hurled him viciously against the frozen wall, the impact driving the wind painfully from the clansman’s lungs and sending his axe spinning from his grasp. A heartbeat later, the beast’s gnarled fingers encircled Caylen’s throat, lifting him from his feet in a crushing, vice-like grip. Through a haze of pain, Caylen felt the troll’s hot and noisome spittle splash against his face and found himself staring into the creature’s malefic eyes, now glimmering mere inches from his own. Gasping for breath, he scrabbled in vain for the hilt of the broadsword at his belt as the troll’s iron grasp tightened inexorably. In desperation, the clansman drew back his fist and drove his scarred and salt-coarsened knuckles hard into the bridge of the creature’s rugous nose. There came a resounding crack and with a stertorous grunt the troll abruptly released its hold, staggering blindly backwards in a paroxysm of pain. Gratefully filling his lungs with a draught of icy air, Caylen leaped clear of the beast’s shadow and swiftly dragged Wolf’s Tooth from its leathern scabbard.
“Now, let us finish this,” he hissed, facing his towering adversary once more.
Its face a troglodytic mask of sheer untrammelled hatred, the troll uttered a thunderous roar and lunged forward with renewed ferocity. The beast’s huge hand swept forth in a savage arc which gouged a quintet of red furrows into Caylen’s chest, but the clansman’s glyph-scored steel was swift to answer the blow and the sword duly clove through sinew and bone to sever the troll’s right arm cleanly below the elbow. A viscid torrent of blood spattered Caylen’s face and torso as the beast’s keening howl reverberated throughout the icy chamber. Dropping instantly to one knee, Caylen thrust Wolf’s Tooth upward with all his might, piercing the troll’s fibrous abdomen and embedding the blade to its hilt. With a final sepulchral growl, the hulking creature’s legs buckled and Caylen dragged his crimson blade free as the great beast slumped lifeless to the rimy floor of the grotto. Regaining his feet, Caylen slowly wiped his befouled blade clean on the fallen troll’s shaggy hide before returning it to its scabbard. Then, he recovered his axe and cloak from where they lay within the cavern and secured his wolfskin mantle once more about his bloodied shoulders.
A sudden commotion from the opposite side of the cavern caused Caylen to turn and with a sardonic smile he beheld Guthlac and the remaining mariners emerging hastily from a narrow, partially concealed passageway. Their weapons poised, the reavers glanced tensely about the chamber.
“You missed the battle,” growled Caylen.
Guthlac scabbarded his blade and strode to Caylen’s side, noting the bloodied body of the troll. “And you chose the wrong tunnel.”
Caylen scowled. “No, I simply found a more direct route.”
“What now, Caylen Troll’s Bane?” asked Guthlac with a wry grin.
Caylen gestured to a large rough-hewn arch at the grotto’s northern edge which appeared to lead to another section of the icy cave. “I’ll wager that’s the path out of this cursed place.”
“Aye,” said Guthlac. “But shall we not rest? The sun has surely set out there, and I’ve no wish to traverse this isle at night.”
Caylen nodded, glancing thoughtfully about the pellucid cavern. The remnants of a huge, partially devoured aurochs lay upon the rocky floor amidst an array of cracked and heavily gnawed bones. Smiling, he called to a flaxen-haired mariner who stood by the passageway’s threshold. “Aelfric! Ready your flint and tinder. That beast looks fresh, so let us find something in this damned cavern that burns and we’ll make haste with a fire. And then by the gods, we’ll fill our bellies like we’re back at my long-hall in Ulfheim!”
* * *
Caylen stood upon a snow-kissed plateau beneath a glowering, horned moon. Tight in his grasp was the broken sword Caled-draca, the mighty tribal blade that had shattered during the final stages of the cataclysmic clash at Blackhelm Vale some seven years past. All about him lay the desolate ruins of an ancient, cyclopean shrine, its cracked pillars and sundered walls strewn across the frosty plain like the forlorn bones of some hoary, time-lost colossus. With a start, Caylen realized that a massive white wolf was crouched at his side, its great silvern shoulders nigh on level with his own. The beast’s azure eyes glimmered in the moonlight and its mighty muscles rippled beneath its eburnean fur. The huge wolf suddenly uttered a deep, ferine growl and Caylen followed its lupine gaze to see a towering figure stalking toward him from the depths of the icy shadows. The warrior was clad entirely in chitinous black armour and crowned with a fearsome full helm which sported two great downward curving horns. In its spiked gauntlets, the steel eidolon grasped a vast, cruelly curved greatsword etched with lambent arcane glyphs. Raising his ruined blade, Caylen swiftly adopted a fighting stance and readied himself for battle. The armoured figure closed to a scant ten paces distant and then abruptly halted, driving its sword deep into the frozen ground. As Caylen watched in rapt fascination, the black-clad giant slowly removed its helmet. The man’s countenance was cruel, his youthful features chiselled and aquiline. His skin was pallid, his hair was the colour of alabaster and his eyes shone with a faint viridescent light. He fixed Caylen with a baleful gaze and spoke, his voice deep and sepulchral.
“Look upon me Wolf-King, for I am the spawn of Zyrashana the Witch-Queen… I am the son of Talus Ebonfyre. Know that I have vowed vengeance upon you and your progeny. Beware, for you have incurred my wrath and I am the bane of men and the breaker of kings.”
Caylen smiled coldly. “The son of Ebonfyre, are you? I encountered your father but once, lad. He lost his head over our meeting, if I recall.”
The warrior’s thin lips curled in an invidious sneer and he swiftly donned his helmet and took up his curved sword once more. “Mark me on this, king of savages. I shall bring woe and red ruin unto you and your line. Await my coming when the sun burns black and know that death follows in my wake.”
The dire-wolf at Caylen’s side bared its great ivory fangs and growled once more, its azure eyes narrowing malefically. High above, a ring of rutilant flame abruptly flared about the perimeter of the moon and the face of the lambent sphere swiftly became obscured by a shroud of bituminous black. Instantly, the niveous vista was engulfed by a mantle of deep, stygian shadow…
Caylen awoke with a jolt upon the rimy floor of the cavern and threw off his wolfskin cloak, a vexed expression on his face.
Guthlac swiftly approached from the opposite side of the guttering fire and proffered him a leather costrel filled with mead. “Wolfclan! It’s your watch. By my reckoning, dawn breaks within the hour.”
“That dream was passing strange,” muttered Caylen as he slowly clambered to his feet and took a long draught from the costrel. “Mayhap the meat on that carcass was rotten after all.”
“Either that or your wounds have brought on a fever,” said Guthlac mordantly. “What did the dreamscape show you?”
Caylen sighed wearily. “A shadow from the past, or a vision of the future. The son of Zyrashana the Witch-Queen has evidently sworn vengeance against my progeny.”
“Zyrashana!” exclaimed Guthlac. “I thought we’d heard the last of her after our victory at Blackhelm Vale!”
The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor Page 14
