Brunner the Bounty Hunter

by C. L. Werner

  ‘That’s the way we came up,’ Ulgrin stated proudly. ‘There’s no tricking a dwarf when it comes to stonework.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Brunner told him. ‘But we’re going this way,’ he added motioning for Ithilweil to lead on. Ulgrin spat a foulsounding Khazalid curse into his beard, but hurried after his companions.

  ‘Just around the next turn there is an old storeroom that is never used,’ Ithilweil told Brunner as they paused before the mouth of a four-way intersection. ‘The storeroom has a large cask inside it. But it is really a door that leads into the tunnel. I’ve followed it as far as its end, but it lets out in the very centre of the city. Not a very safe place for me to be.’ Brunner imagined that the elf’s pallid skin coloured slightly as she spoke. ‘At least, not without an escort.’

  ‘We’ll get out of here,’ the bounty hunter assured Ithilweil. ‘Then we’ll pick up that maggot’s trail.’ Brunner tried to give the elf a reassuring smile, but found that he was woefully out of practice. ‘Gobineau won’t stay free for long.’

  But as he turned the corner, the sight that greeted the bounty hunter’s words made him question the veracity of his last statement. The flickering light of torches cast eerie reflections in the polished steel armour of the half-dozen knights who filled the passageway, flanking the grinning, weasel-faced nobleman standing at their centre. Suddenly the seeming timidity of their pursuers was explained. They weren’t supposed to catch the bounty hunters and the elf, but simply herd them into the trap, keep them looking behind instead of ahead. Brunner cursed his own lack of foresight. He should have expected Marimund to know every inch of his own castle, most especially something as vital as an escape route!

  The duc’s sneer was as vicious as the toothy grin of a goblin. Marimund considered each of the fugitives in turn, letting his keen, calculating eyes settle on each for a moment before looking to the next. His eyes blazed briefly with a restrained rage when he stared at Ithilweil.

  ‘Most inconsiderate of you to return my hospitality with such,’ Marimund hesitated, biting down whatever word he had intended to use, selecting a less vituperative replacement, ‘malfeasance.’ Brunner weighed his chances. He still had three bolts loaded in his crossbow. That would allow him to kill Marimund, maybe manage one of his knights before the others fell upon him. The bounty hunter discarded the idea. Marimund was the only chance of talking his way out of the standoff. The nobleman stared at the bounty hunter, as though reading his thoughts.

  ‘You think you can kill me with that disgusting weapon of yours.’ Marimund scoffed. ‘The Lady protects her noble children. Have you never heard of the grace she bestows upon the valiant, turning aside the craven arrows of cowardly swine that they may be forced into honourable combat?’ Marimund rapped a knuckle against his own chest. ‘I am the legitimate ruler of the once proud realm of Mousillon! The blessing of the Lady flows through my veins! What need have I to fear your filthy arrows?’

  ‘By Grimnir’s axe!’ Ulgrin hissed. ‘Is every nobleman in this damn city insane?’ The dwarfs outburst caused a flicker of discomfort to cross Marimund’s face, then a cold fury to smoulder in his eyes.

  ‘Kill them.’ Marimund declared, waving a hand at the knights around him. The armoured warriors started to move forward. In that instant, Brunner acted, firing his crossbow at the only target that would possibly have any effect.

  Marimund crumpled in a screaming heap, his sword fallen to the floor beside him as he clamped both hands at the steel bolt protruding from his knee. Several of the knights immediately turned away from Brunner and his companions, rushing back to aid their master. The bounty hunter turned and raced back the way they had come, the feet pounding to either side of him telling him that Ithilweil and Ulgrin had not hesitated in following his lead. Behind them, the clatter of armour told Brunner that some of Marimund’s knights had ignored their lord’s cries, intent on following his last command. Still, at least a few of them would be detained helping their injured master. With Marimund dead, they would have had all of the knights on their tail, focused on avenging their slain lord. This way, at least the odds were somewhat reduced.

  Now if they could just reach Ulgrin’s tunnel without running into the troops that had been herding them toward Marimund…

  Marimund snapped at the men carrying him away from the scene of his wounding, lashing them with his tongue every time a fresh trickle of pain surged through his body. He’d have that filthy assassin’s body carved into dog meat and his head would rot upon a pike until the flesh turned black beneath the sun. The audacity of the dog to strike him, him, with his filthy coward’s weapon!

  And the anguish he would visit upon the assassin’s remains would be as nothing compared to what he was going to do to that traitorous elf witch. Marimund dearly hoped that she at least was taken alive. His knights were zealous in their work, and an elf witch, a single assassin, and some odd-looking shit-covered gnome were hardly going to give them a decent fight. But at least they would know it was by Marimund’s command that they died, and that was just as good as the nobleman’s own sword accomplishing the deed.

  A foul, acrid stench impressed itself upon the duc, causing him to forget his pain for a moment, so strong and unsettling was the odour. Marimund wondered for a moment if something might not be burning in one of the rooms of the castle, perhaps some feeble attempt by Ithilweil to distract him and his men from their pursuit. But the duc did not have long to consider this thought, for he suddenly had much more important things to consider as the corridor around him shook and swayed as though he were within a ship at sea. The knights carrying him fell against the walls as the castle shuddered, dropping their noble burden to the floor. Marimund screamed anew as his maimed leg struck the hard flagstones.

  Marimund began to lift himself from the floor when the castle shook again, knocking him flat once more. The impact was vastly more powerful this time, as though someone were hurling massive boulders into the side of the fortress. Marimund could hear the heavy stone blocks groaning and grinding against one another, thick trails of dust raining down from the ceiling overhead. He covered his head as the roof began to give way, rocks and heavy blocks of stone tumbling downward now. Again the castle shook as some incredible force shook it. The duc had seen mighty hurricanes sweep across Mousillon, and those relentless tempests had not even evoked a fraction of the force now assaulting his home.

  The realisation of what must be happening dawned on Marimund just as the corridor shook again and the walls collapsed around him.

  The guards in the tower that rose from the north wall of Marimund’s castle only just had time to scream before they died, as they witnessed the gigantic crimson shape that had fallen upon them from the night sky. Claws the size of ox carts had gripped the fortification, talons sinking into the stonework as though it were crafted from soft clay. Without losing any of its momentum, the swooping fiend had ripped the top of the tower free, spilling tiny figures from its battlements, and with a graceful motion had turned its sudden descent, ascending back into the firmament once more. But as it did so, the massive claws flung the broken tower at the brooding mass of the keep, lending it some of the ghastly power of the creature’s momentum. The immense weight of the tower smacked into the side of Marimund’s castle with the force of a dozen catapults, rupturing its northern face like the shell of an egg.

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, the huge shape disappeared once more, vanishing from sight as it was consumed by the night. Behind it, it left a foul, mephitic smell, like the musk of serpents mixed with the stink of charcoal. The few soldiers standing gapmouthed on the outer walls of the castle could not believe what they had seen, doubting their very sanity. All had happened so quickly, it was hard to believe it had happened at all.

  It was a man-at-arms in the south tower who saw the first flicker of fire shine out from the blackness above. Soon, all eyes were watching as the flame hurtled downward, speeding toward the keep. There was no shout of alarm, no cry of horr
or. Somehow, the soldiers had a sense that what they were witnessing was too big for fear. They watched in an awed silence as the flame became more distinct in its descent, as it resolved itself into a fiery steam billowing out from the jaws of a gigantic visage. The hurtling leviathan crashed into the top of the keep and the awed silence was shattered by the shriek of wood and the rumble of stone. A vast cloud of grey dust blossomed about the immense creature, engulfing it for a moment like some grainy fog. Then the dust fell away and the watching soldiers were able to shout and scream, every voice crying the same word.

  ‘A dragon!’

  It was vast, gigantic. Two hundred feet from the tip of his snout to the pointed barb that terminated his immense tail. The dragon wore crimson scales upon his limbs and sides, fading into a thick armour of black bony plates upon his back. From these plates rose a rank of sharp spines, like a column of pikemen, their wicked points gleaming in the flickering glow of the dragon’s exhalations. Each of the wyrm’s legs was massive, thick as a tree trunk and bulging beneath its scaly covering with muscle and power. From the shoulders, colossal wings were stretched, great leathery pinions set in a framework of finger-like bones. The dragon’s head leered before his body, supported upon a neck as thick as a river barge, long black horns stabbing back away from the face from just above the sunken sockets of his cold, yellow eyes. From the crater-like nostrils, an orange smoke wafted, illuminating the mighty beast and casting eerie shadows upon the enormous jaws beneath the dragon’s head. Rank upon rank of jagged teeth, each longer than a man’s arm, shone out from their setting of crimson scales.

  The observers had one and all heard the legends of noble knights riding forth to slay marauding drakes, rescuing fair damsels and golden treasures from the caves of such scaly monsters. Such stories were common in the lore and legend of Bretonnia, and well known to even the poorest of its peasants. But none had ever seen the creatures spoken of in these tales, perhaps taking comfort in believing such beasts to be a part of the history of their land rather than something that might return in their own time. As terror overcame the awe that had gripped the hearts of the soldiers, the men-at-arms scrambled over one another in their haste to be quit of the battlements, to abandon the fortress to the legendary horror that had fallen upon it from the grim night sky.

  Malok paid the fleeing soldiers little notice, intent upon pulverising the stone structure beneath him. The dragon’s impact had shaken the very foundations of the keep, though the tough body of the wyrm had felt little of his violent collision with the unyielding fortification. Now he brought his heavy clawed legs smashing again and again into the cracked rubble that roofed the structure, causing the already weakened stonework to shudder and groan. Malok could feel the castle shifting beneath him as rooms and corridors collapsed below, shifting tons of stone to crush the little vermin within.

  The dragon reared his head back, roaring into the night, a sound like the scream of hot steel thrust into icy snow magnified to such a degree that the eardrums of the human witnesses threatened to burst under such duress. Gouts of flame, like the expulsions of a blast furnace, flashed from Malok’s jaws, staining the night sky a hellish hue. The dragon maintained his violent, boastful display of wrath and retribution for a lingering moment, letting his display of power build until he could feel the fiery heat swelling within him. Then the dragon turned his head downward, expelling a long stream of golden flame into the structure beneath his feet.

  Wooden support beams exploded as the dragonfire consumed them, turning oak and pine into ash and steam. The already weakened pile caved in beneath the reptile as the supports were destroyed. Three floors of castle crumpled, crushing downward, pushing outward against the walls. Malok beat his wings, lifting himself free as the castle disintegrated into a pile of rock and debris, smoke and dust billowing about him as the mighty wings caused the air to swirl and writhe.

  The hovering dragon glared down at his handiwork, reptilian eyes narrowing into dagger-like slits as he contemplated the destruction. Deciding it was not enough, Malok drew in another breath, expelling a second stream of flame into the rubble, sending tons of stone exploding into the air as the fiery column struck.

  The dragon snarled down at the rubble, a deep and satisfied hiss, then wheeled away, now intent on attending to all the tiny little men who had been running away from the curtain wall and guard towers. After all, any one of them might be the vermin who had driven the dragon to come here. And that was a summons Malok was not going to let pass unanswered.

  ‘This should be far enough,’ Ulgrin announced, his eyes narrowing as he studied the black muck-encrusted brickwork overhead. ‘We’re past the keep now. Nothing to come down about our heads now. Except of course the courtyard,’ the dwarf added with a morbid chuckle. Much to the annoyance of his companions, Ulgrin seemed to be almost enjoying himself as they crawled through the filthy, cramped confines of the tunnel. Brunner suspected the change in Ulgrin’s attitude had much to do with the fact that his companions were so clearly discomfited by their circumstances. While the low ceiling of the tunnel made Ulgrin walk with a slight stoop, it forced the much taller Brunner and Ithilweil to creep along almost bent double, their hands groping into the muck coating the walls to maintain their balance. The dwarf’s almost supernatural ability to sense the pressure of the stone above them had been the only real guide as to how far they had come, and how far they might yet have to go before reaching the exit.

  They had reached the tunnel well ahead of the heavily armoured knights Marimund had sent after them, but they didn’t have much of a lead over their pursuers. The knights of Bretonnia, for all their arrogance and pride, were some of the most dangerous warriors any land had to offer. In their armour plate, only the most powerful or expertly aimed blows had any hope of wounding the knight within, nor was the warrior likely to stand still while his enemy attempted such a strike. Their style was far more direct and brutal than the elaborate feint and deceive flourishes of Tilea’s duellists, but the swordsmanship of a Bretonnian knight was no less intimidating, something Brunner felt better challenging from fifty paces away with a crossbow than in the cramped confines of a dungeon where room to manoeuvre was limited and every advantage lay with the knight.

  The bounty hunters had decided that the only course of action, upon gaining the dank tunnel, was to wait out their pursuers and strike them down as they tried to follow, a tactic which Ithilweil opposed as being utterly base and cowardly. Neither Brunner or Ulgrin paid the slightest interest to her moral complaints. This was the real world, not some duel between princes in an elven court with all its rules of etiquette and tradition. There were trained, wellarmed killers pursuing them, men who would strike them down without the slightest hesitation should they catch them. The bounty hunters were determined not to give them such an opportunity.

  The first knight, almost crawling as he progressed through the narrow tunnel, his helmet removed in order that he might not be rendered completely blind, had found himself surprised by Ulgrin when the dwarf’s axe bit cleanly through the warrior’s mail coif and the neck beneath. The knight following the decapitated man rose in alarm, his mouth opening to give voice to a cry of warning. The sound was silenced when a bolt from Brunner’s crossbow sank into the knight’s forehead. After that, the pursuers had shown a bit more caution. They must have been joined by the larger company that had herded the bounty hunters toward Marimund, for the next men sent crawling through the dank tunnel were lightly armoured squires rather than bulky knights in plate mail. Brunner and Ulgrin waded further into the passage, weapons ready to repeat their grim labours. Then the walls shook.

  The tremor was followed by others, far greater in strength and ferocity. All within the tunnel could hear the crash of stone and the screams of doomed men and women sounding from the castle. The groan and roar of toppling stone grew into a dull, almost organic thing, pounding against their ears with such violence that it seemed determined to deafen all who were victim of it. The squires
who had been sent into the tunnel scrambled forward like panicked rats scurrying from a sinking ship. They had been closer to the mouth of Ulgrin’s tunnel and had heard more distinctly the noise of their comrades being crushed beneath tons of stone.

  In their heedless flight, the squires found themselves easy prey for the waiting blades of Brunner and Ulgrin. It was not a fight, it was a slaughter, but the bounty hunters had done far worse in their black careers than take advantage of disoriented foes; the slaying of the squires would be forgotten almost as soon as it was achieved.

  Then another tremor shook the castle and the rumble of stone sounded from much nearer. The high-pitched death shriek of a squire cagey enough to linger back while his fellows met the blades of the two bounty killers told a terrifying story. The tunnel was collapsing behind them! The three fugitives began a mad scramble back down the dismal corridor, struggling to stay ahead of the roar behind them. Ulgrin, with a long history of mining and the cave-ins that are the constant worry of the miner, was better able to judge the nearness of the collapse. His words of gruff, oath-strewn encouragement lent a new speed to Brunner and Ithilweils tired legs.

  It was the elf who spoke now, wiping some of the muck from her soiled garments with as much dignity as the cramped confines of the tunnel would allow. ‘It came,’ she said, her voice heavy with resignation. ‘The fool called it and it came.’

  ‘What came?’ Brunner asked, his voice low and cautious.

  ‘The dragon that is bound to the Fell Fang,’ Ithilweil responded. ‘It must have been very near to have come so swiftly. And that fool called it, without any idea of what he summoned or how to control it!’