Runefang

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

  The mule’s panic brought it closer to the black tent. The templar turned to arrest the animal’s approach, but a kick from its back legs sprawled him in the dust. Another kick cracked into the flank of the crone’s horse. The mount reared in alarm, neighing in fright. The horse galloped away from the mule, some of the brute’s panic transferring to it. The crone gave voice to a surprisingly animated shriek and locked her arms around her mount’s neck, holding on with all her strength as the wild horse ran through the camp.

  Kessler reacted automatically to the charging mare, throwing himself at the horse. One hand caught at the animal’s mane, another wrapped itself in the drooping reins. Kessler felt a surge of pain as the horse’s momentum dragged him across the ground, burning the muscles in his powerful arms. He strained to turn the animal’s head, exerting his immense strength to halt its reckless charge. The horse fought him for a moment, still blinded by the mule’s panic, and then slowly allowed its pace to slacken. When it had come to a halt, Kessler reached up and grabbed the frightened rider, intending to lower her to the ground.

  He froze in mid-motion. The body beneath his hands wasn’t that of some withered old hag. It was firm and supple, strong and young. The hood had been thrown back somewhat by the violence of the wild ride. He could see smooth, pale skin, like polished alabaster, devoid of either blemish or wrinkle. The face hidden beneath the hood was young, not some gargoyle countenance ravaged by age. Kessler stared in disbelief at that face, at the soft delicate features, the bright green eyes. In that instant, he wondered if he had ever seen a more beautiful face.

  That realisation made him hurriedly set her down. He knew what he looked like, his face with its ghastly scars and broken bones. He’d been captured by goblins, and when they’d tired of using clubs on him they’d started with their knives. It wasn’t until he stopped screaming that they had lost interest, by then what was left wasn’t really much of a face.

  Kessler waited for the familiar look of revulsion and loathing. He waited for the woman to turn her head in disgust. Instead she kept looking at him, a strange, sorrowful light in her eyes. It wasn’t pity, but something more despondent. It was Kessler who finally looked away.

  “She isn’t one of your tavern whores,” a chill voice snarled at him. The Black Guardsman must have run after them once he had picked himself off the ground. The templar stood before him, one hand on his sword, the other clenched in a fist. “Keep your grubby paws off her, sell-sword.”

  Crimson began to fill Kessler’s vision. His hand started to reach for the greatsword slung across his back. He glared back at the templar. Then he glanced away, staring back at Carlinda. The woman was still looking at him, that strange sadness in her eyes. The anger that had flared up inside him withered. Kessler backed away, watching in silence as the templar recovered the woman’s horse and led both animal and brute back towards the black tent. Once, only once, she turned, and he could feel her eyes staring at him from beneath the hood that once more covered her face.

  “Crone,” Kessler muttered, spitting into the dirt. “Somebody wasn’t paying much attention when they handed that title out.”

  Kessler walked away from the camp. It was a rare thing for him, backing down before anyone, for whatever reason. He didn’t like the way Carlinda had looked at him. Loathing, disgust, horror: these were reactions he expected to find in a woman’s eyes when she looked at him. It was something different with her, something that made him uneasy. It was a look of understanding.

  The swordsman kicked at a bluish shard of flint lying in his path. Maybe she did understand, he reflected. The others in the camp regarded her scarcely better than they would a leper. He thought about what Ottmar had told him, about the way death followed her wherever she went. He stopped walking towards the trees, glancing back at the camp, at the black tent with the templar standing outside it. Death held no fear for him. It was life that plagued him, filling his dreams with phantoms of what might have been. The laughter, the joy of others was like salt in an open wound to him. To see children, to see lovers walking hand in hand, these were tortures worse to him than even the knives of the goblins.

  She’d looked at him, looked at his ruin of a face, not with revulsion and not with pity. She was so young, so beautiful to be hidden away behind the foul title of “crone”. Kessler’s ugliness was on display for all to see, it was something he could not deny. That was how he could endure, because he knew it was there. Carlinda’s ugliness was something that people imagined they saw, a spectral taint that had grown around her, fed by the superstitious gossip of ignorant peasants until even she came to believe it. Kessler had not felt the icy breath of Morr when he had reached out to touch her. He had not seen his flesh wither as his hand grasped for her. Superstition and imagination, that was all. He smiled as emotion filled him. It was strange that he, of all people, could find pity for another. He’d never found any for his many victims. Perhaps he wasn’t as dead as he sometimes felt, to be moved by the tragedy that had made Carlinda both pariah and witch.

  Kessler turned back towards the trees, not liking the desperate, hopeless thoughts that came to him. He’d left that all behind him long ago. The goblins had cut it out of him. Now he was a killer, nothing more. Someday, he would meet someone better than him, stronger or quicker. Then it would end. There was nothing else. There could be nothing else.

  The swordsman’s boot kicked out at another shard of flint. This time, Kessler watched it fly away, clattering across the rocky ground. It landed near a strange jumble of stones. Curiosity took root and he walked over to the pile. Staring down at it, at first the pile didn’t seem anything more than some freakish caprice of nature. Something nagged at him, however, and he began to circle the stones. Gradually, he became aware of a subtle arrangement of stones that were somewhat darker than the others. Once the observation was made, he fancied he could make out a jagged arrow-like shape formed by the darker stones within the pile. He tried to shake off the impression, but the more he looked at it, the more convinced he was that it was there. Kessler looked up from the stones, staring in the direction he thought the arrow pointed. He saw a scraggly little bush and a few pine with moss clinging to their sides, but nothing more.

  He started to walk towards the bush when he heard a sound behind him. He saw Ekdahl emerge from the undergrowth, a brace of hares slung over one shoulder, his bow in his hands. The scout nodded as he matched Kessler’s gaze, and then glanced aside at the stones. Ekdahl walked over to the pile, staring down at it for a moment.

  “Looks like a hunter’s sign,” Ekdahl said, scattering the stones with his boot.

  “Seemed like it was pointing over here,” Kessler said. Almost unconsciously, his hand had closed around the hilt of the sword slung across his back. Ekdahl gave no reaction to the menacing gesture, keeping his eyes trained on the hard, rocky ground. He stepped away from the scattered pile, striding confidently towards the bush. Kessler followed him, keeping just enough distance between them so that he would have room to work his greatsword.

  Ekdahl leaned down, studying the bush, resting the butt of his bow against the ground. He pawed at the dirt for a moment, his hand emerging with a piece of tanned goatskin. The scout stared at the skin briefly, and then reached up to offer it to Kessler. He accepted it with his left hand, keeping the right firmly closed around the sword hilt. There was writing of some kind on the back of the goatskin. Kessler had never learned to read, but he was familiar enough with the letters of Reikspiel to recognise them. What was written on the piece of hide was unlike any writing as he had ever seen.

  “What does it say?”

  Ekdahl shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Those symbols are the same as those used by woodsmen and rangers, but the way they are put together doesn’t make any sense. It must be in some kind of code.”

  Kessler digested that. He held the goatskin to his face, smelling the charcoal that had been used to make the signs. He pressed a finger against one of the symbols.
When he pulled it away, most of the black dust clung to it. “Seems recent.”

  “It is,” Ekdahl said.

  “As recent as our making camp?”

  “Possibly.”

  Kessler mulled that over as well, but didn’t like where it led. Ekdahl nodded in agreement.

  “Yes, it might mean somebody is tracking us,” the archer said. He turned and stared into the woods. “He could be watching us right now.”

  Kessler folded the goatskin and stuffed it under his tunic. “Unless he’s already inside the camp.”

  Ekdahl’s eyes narrowed as the swordsman spoke. He rose from where he squatted beside the bush, fingering his bow.

  Kessler slowly let his hand drop away from the hilt of his greatsword. “I’ll take this to the baron,” he said. “See what he makes of it. Maybe somebody down there can tell us what it says.” Without further comment, Kessler started back to the camp, carrying himself with unconcerned confidence.

  Ekdahl watched the baron’s champion leave, and then turned his eyes back to the trees.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The first they were aware of trouble was when Ekdahl drifted back to the column and conferred with the baron. They had been riding for two days through the rocky hill country that formed part of the border between Solland and Wissenland proper. In all that time, they had not seen a single soul, only the occasional hill goat and river wren. Ekdahl had explained that the hill country was very sparsely inhabited. The ground was too rocky to plant crops and the timber too difficult to harvest to support woodsmen. The only sizeable settlement was a village called Murzklein, built right where the hill country ended and the comparatively fertile river plain began.

  Ekdahl, riding ahead of the column, was the first to see the village. Even from a distance, he could see that something was wrong. It was midday and there was no sign of life about the place, no farmers out in the fields, no cattle out in the pastures.

  Baron von Rabwald pondered Ekdahl’s report, deeply troubled by the sense of unease that tinged the bowman’s words. Foremost in his mind was a hideous thought. Had Zahaak turned back south after all? Was this the work of his unholy legions?

  “How much time will we lose going around?” Ernst asked the scout.

  “This is the only path,” Ekdahl reported. “I’m sure we could find another way down through the hills, but it’ll be hard going with the horses. We’d have to abandon the wagons.”

  The baron considered that. They could replace the wagons and provisions at one of the river settlements, assuming the undead had not already been there, but he wasn’t sure if he could trust the amateur horsemanship of some of Ottmar’s men over such unforgiving terrain. He thought about the old Reikland adage about the two daemons, the one that was known and the one that wasn’t. He decided to risk the unknown.

  “Sergeant!” Ernst called out. “Have your men ready their weapons. It looks like trouble up ahead. Marshal Eugen, have your knights fan out. Give support to the sergeant’s men.”

  The old knight nodded in understanding and began to spread his riders out.

  “Think somebody is waiting for us down there?” Kessler asked, nudging his horse closer to the baron’s.

  “Could be,” Ernst replied, thinking about the strange, indecipherable message the swordsman had found. “Head to the rear. Make sure the witch and the dwarf stay safe.”

  Kessler’s eyes narrowed, his crooked face lifting into a scowl. “My place is up here, making sure you stay safe,” he growled.

  The baron planted a good-natured slap on Kessler’s arm.

  “If we lose the witch and the dwarf we’ll never find what we’re looking for,” he said. “Make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  Kessler gave the nobleman a reluctant nod and pulled his horse around, moving through the column to the back of the line.

  Ernst watched him go, and then turned back around.

  “Warden Ekdahl, if you would lead the way.”

  The village of Murzklein was a shabby, run-down cluster of hovels, mud walls showing through cracked and pitted plaster, thatched roofs bowed and crushed by too many heavy snows. There was an atmosphere of decay and ruin about the place that impressed itself on the baron from the start. The fields surrounding the village were scraggly and yellowing, and the nobleman felt sorry for anyone trying to scratch a living from whatever bleak harvest such a crop would yield.

  Ernst quickly noticed the eerie quiet that had set Ekdahl on guard. The village was as quiet as a tomb; not even a bird flew above the hovels. The scout was right. At such an hour there should be some sort of activity, even if it was nothing more than a few goats grazing in the pasture. The baron’s hand dropped to his sword and he found himself glancing over his shoulder to make sure that the men following him were likewise on their guard. Ahead, Ekdahl dropped from his horse. The scout jogged back to the column, leading his steed. He quickly handed the reins to one of Ottmar’s riders and turned towards Ernst.

  “I’ll check ahead and see if I can see anything,” Ekdahl said.

  The baron waved his approval to the man. Ekdahl turned back towards the desolate village, unslinging his bow. Nocking an arrow to the string, he slowly advanced up the rocky path, sometimes lingering behind a post or a boulder, studying the dreary walls with his hawkish gaze. After what seemed like hours, the bowman reached the foremost of the buildings. His back pressed against the crumbling plaster, Ekdahl edged around the corner of the structure and disappeared into the lifeless street beyond.

  A moment passed, and then Ekdahl reappeared, waving the column forward.

  Ernst repeated the gesture, and with a clatter of hooves and the rattle of armour, the riders hastened to join the scout.

  Ernst and the others headed into the village. The stink of death greeted them as they approached the buildings. The baron drew his sword, his eyes narrowing as he scrutinised the decaying buildings. Ekdahl leaned on his bow, watching the riders draw near, his face the expressionless mask of the true professional.

  “I’ve found the villagers,” he said by way of greeting. He nodded his head down the dirt street that squirmed between the depressing hovels.

  Ernst followed the scout down the little lane, Ottmar’s men forming up behind him. The dark, vacant windows and doorways of the village buildings seemed to watch them as they rode past. The baron saw what looked like blood splashed across the plaster front of one building, manoeuvring his horse around the broken ruins of a door that lay strewn across the lane. Cautious murmurs rose behind him, the soldiers watching the empty houses with ever-increasing anxiety. The stench of death continued to rise the deeper into the village they drew. Ernst was just beginning to consider that perhaps they should head back into the hills when his horse emerged from the narrow street into the stone-lined plaza that formed Murzklein’s miserable square. He gagged at the grisly sight.

  A great mound filled the middle of the square, a heap of butchered heads and dismembered limbs. A quick glance told Ernst that the heads were both male and female, and had been taken without regard to age. A spear stood above the mound, the brawny body of a man impaled upon it. The crude approximation of a splintered skull had been daubed upon the body’s chest in blood.

  “Greenskins,” Eugen spat, glaring at the grisly massacre. “I’ve seen that sign before. It’s the totem of Uhrghul Skullcracker.”

  “I thought he was slain at the Battle of Rötenbach,” Ottmar said.

  “We broke his army, but we were never certain the warlord was among the dead,” Eugen explained. “It appears he pulled through, and found some more followers.” The knight rode closer to the mound of decaying humanity, waving away the thick cloud of flies that buzzed around it. He closed a gauntlet around the tip of the spear, knocking it down with a savage tug.

  “First skeletons and now orcs,” Ottmar grumbled.

  Ekdahl rose from his examination of the bloody tracks scattered throughout the square.

  “What do you expect?” the scout asked. �
�Count Eberfeld has drawn every available man north to join his army: no more patrols along the roads, no more rangers watching the wild places. Lots of things that were keeping their heads down will be growing bolder: bandits, beastmen,” he looked back at the gruesome pile of heads, “orcs.”

  Baron von Rabwald held a hand to his nose to stifle the stench. “Sergeant, have some of your men form up a burial detail. Ask the crone if she can give the rites of Morr to these people.”

  Ottmar turned around in his saddle, barking out orders to his men. Several soldiers reluctantly dismounted and started to approach the mound, a few opportunistic rats retreating from their approach.

  “I shouldn’t do that.”

  Ernst spun around, finding Skanir grinning at him from the back of his mule. The dwarf took the pipe from his mouth and pointed with it at the base of one of the mud-brick walls that enclosed the square. It took the baron a moment to realise that he was indicating a strange object jumbled against the crumbling plaster. It was a bizarre collection of rubbish: bits of iron and copper, scraps of cloth and wool, old bones and sticks. All of it was tied together with rags. Ernst was reminded of the bundles they had seen refugees from the towns threatened by Zahaak carrying as they fled their homes, but what sort of idiot would bother about such junk? Skanir stabbed his pipe at another wall, and Ernst saw two more bundles of garbage. Now that he knew what he was looking for, the baron could see several more clustered around the plaza. He directed his puzzled gaze back at the dwarf.

  “Somebody’s been doing a bit of looting,” Skanir commented, tucking his pipe back in his belt. “Probably waiting for nightfall before making away with it.”

  “Looting?” Ernst scoffed. “Who would bother stealing that kind of junk?”