Then Vald, the Silver Storm, fell to his knees in the cold muck.
Everywhere he frantically looked, feeling red death creeping into his eyes. A life of mighty deeds, honor untarnished by time, and even love dared in war’s shadow did not redeem him. He could not see Sparrow anywhere.
A terrible loneliness did he know then. Fenrir dropped from his metal grasp. Red Fang stuck into the ground like a leaning banner.
Like all before him, he knew the final truth of all things, felt the great wheel turning behind time, and saw into the vast glow of love that is the universe.
Vald breathed his last breath, and died.
A scream was heard. A terrible, shrill, hoarse scream. From the wall top it echoed across the moor. It was a cracking, terrified scream. The battle seemed to pause the sound was so striking. Mere feet from Manac himself stood Sparrow. Her face was twisted with agony and impossible surprise, but only for a split second. She completed her mission; driving forward in a death-lunge, both daggers extended. The blades found their target, and Manac the World-Killer was gutted. His organs and heart burst from his back like a bucket of gore. Sparrow practically flew through him she had thrust so hard. His vile guts covered her, making her grief-mask even more grim.
She had lived years alone, never given up hope, gotten Dobbs Tarny killed, and grown to womanhood... All so she could love Vald the Northman. All she had done, all she left unsaid weighed down on her, and she simply cracked. From the wall top she jumped, covered in red and blades out like a panther. Into a sea of demons she vanished, and was never seen again.
This the Dwarven army took as an omen from the Gods, and they went berzerk. Whirling and beheading and hewing limbs they broke rank in unison. The enemy was chopped, and skewered, and crushed, and crackled. The Dwarves died, too, as their lives had prepared them to. It was a thing to behold: the war-fury of the Dwarves. They head butted and threw each other like cannonballs. They pole-vaulted on their spears and charged like rhinos. Their shields they threw as weapons, and even disarmed they killed with their helmets, or their boots, or bare hands.
Soon only a handful of them remained, and Mud, and Horn. In grim, slow motions they circled and killed the last of the clones. It was dire, silent, dispicable work. When it was done, then all fell into the frost, and wept. Justice was done, and there was no justice.
For three days they stayed there outside the wall. They rested, and sang songs, and grieved. Three more Dwarves died in those days, either by the cold or the corrosion or their wounds who can say. When beckoned the road at last, three Dwarves, Horn and Mud it was only. They took Manac’s hideous head in a leather bag, and began trudging.
27
Two days later only one Dwarf remained. His grief was terrible. He was called Hannar.
The three of them walked single file, and did not speak. Darkness fell again, bringing the faces of the dead. No fire could warm them, and their equipment was falling apart in the salt. Around that pale flame they huddled, and shook.
“It is a shame to survive this,” Hannar mumbled.
“No,” Mud returned, “the tale must be told.”
“Mud is right, Hannar. Yours is the hero’s path. Akram smiles on us.”
“What know you, elf, of my King? From the sewers of Englemoor he pulled me up. From death’s door he saved me, trained me to fight, and made me a warrior fit for his service! His heart I served, not your forked elf tongue!” There was a long silence.
“Get some sleep,” Mud finally said, “We have another 12 days walk through the frozen salt.”
“What sleep can we know?” Hannar asked, tears blurring his eyes, “All my kin are dead, and dissolving in the marsh like rot! What rest can we ask, we who have failed our kingdom?” He stood, threw off his filthy wool cloak, and stormed off. Horn shot a frightened glance at Mud, but he closed his eye and shook his head.
“He’ll be back. It is understandable.”
But he never returned.
In dawn’s light Mud and Horn began walking, and within a half-league they found Hannar. He had collapsed in the cold, and lay fingers curled and face down in the black corrosion. Ice-crusted peat gathered around him like a hungry beast.
“How we will return from this nightmare,” Horn asked, muttering. Her face was streaked with black muck, and the tracks of endless tears there marked her woe.
“One step at a time, my lovely,” Mud managed a small smile. A cloud of gnats chose that grim moment to bobble into his face, and Horn had to smile in return.
So they walked. They got lost, and got stuck, and their clothes ripped and dissolved. It became colder and colder; the swamp had a thick layer of freeze on top of its puddles and brown tarns. Horn was shivering violently as they walked. Mud let her rest, and they ate pemmican and red wine. Her skin was blue, and her eyes glazing with white. Her breath was in short gasps, and her knees buckled in when she stood.
Mud was hardly better. He could not feel his toes, and the skin on his legs was dissolved away with salt crust. When Horn stumbled at last, he too fell. She quietly slumped forward, landing on her knees. Her cloak she clutched with both hands and that grip remained even as life left her. There too knelt Mud, and they looked into each other’s eyes. She had the most beautiful green eyes, even glazed and bruised and crying. That deep, wonderful green. Backward at last she went limp, and lay on the cracked ice with a terrible open-eyed gaze to heaven.
For the Orc King this was too much to bear, and he lost his balance. From knees he pitched sideways, swirling with grief. His right hand he plunged into the ice to catch himself. So cold and thick was that mucky ooze, it left a hole the shape of his hand. The world wheeled. He flopped onto his side and felt the salt sting his face like acid.
A hole in the shape of a hand, and those beautiful green eyes… With these last visions did he float into oblivion.
Lo, what a world! What cruelty in fate we know, for these were the finest of folk! So ended their tale, or so it seemed. For in death time can be strange, and all things move in great obscured circles…
28
Mud snapped awake suddenly. He was utterly confused. Where was he? Those green eyes.... Who?
He looked around with both eyes. There were three circular black tarns, devoid of cattails or grass. Each was a puddle of slick black muckish water, almost like a thin tar. They were purest black, and had a peculiar look, for they did not reflect the cloudy sky or glare like any normal brackish water. Mud approached, moving warily, his senses suddenly on edge. The water was as black as the space between the stars.
The water. The pools. The vision he had sought. Crossing time and peril, losing Vald and Sparrow and even greeneyed Horn… All a vision. Was it inevitable fate, or merely a nightmare more real and complex than any imaginable? It was simply too much to bear. The mortal mind cannot live two lives and stay sane.
“Hide these truths from me!” Mud screamed, “I have dared too much! Seen too much of a future I dare not live! Take these future-memories from me! If this be my fate, to live this tale I have just seen, then let me do it as a hero! Not some drooling madman doomed to know the inevitable death of those he loves! Take it from me!”
For a moment, the Gods were merciful, and showed pity. For on Mud the Great Orc King they lay a black sleep of forgetting.
The black expanded and engulfed him. He closed his eyes. When next they opened, he lay on a cobbled road. He was caked in dried black filth, and his bones ached. The sun was high and the sky clear. The road wound through rocky green hills, and the pavers were sagged and spreading, their age apparent.
“Stay on your back, villain,” a voice sounded from nearby. The sound made Mud flinch. He hadn’t heard a voice in what seemed ages. He didn’t move; still paralyzed by confusion.
“You’ll be manacled, and brought as a slave to the mines of Westburg,” the voice continued, growing nearer. It was a mighty, commanding voice. “We’ve had enough of your kind in these lands, Orc.”
Mud mustered the
strength to look, and saw a Northman take a step forward. He was a mighty figure, clad in leatherbound steel scales and plate greaves. At this man’s belt a gleaming longsword hung on nine silver buckles, and the crest of King Akram was blazoned on his raiment.
“I am Vald, Captain of King Akram’s army, and my road has been too long. Put these on your brutish wrists and offer me no offense, or I will cleave you in two.” He dropped a pair of iron manacles at Mud’s feet. Mud bent, with effort, and shackled himself. What care had he for captivity when only the yawning black was there to answer his amnesia? None.
Mud and Horn, Sword and Sparrow (Runehammer Books Book 1) Page 11
