Runefang

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

  The orc grimaced, spitting at the cave the hydra had fled into. He still had a dozen warriors, more than enough to fish the creature from its hole. Maybe they could round up a few of the goblins and get them to rig up some sort of ladder to reach the hole. The weedy wretches had scampered off at the first sign of a real fight, but they’d be back soon enough to claim a pick of the plunder.

  The thought of plunder brought Uhrghul’s gaze lower. The orc grunted angrily as he saw the gaping entrance to the crypt. None of his orcs had opened the tomb, and the hydra had fled into the cave. That meant some of the humans had escaped, creeping down into the crypt to steal the treasure.

  Uhrghul snarled, wincing at the pain from his shattered tusk. Stabbing a hand into his mouth, he ripped the offending tooth from its socket. He pressed his tongue against his gum to stifle the flow of blood. The humans were down there, trying to rob him of his treasure. Well, he’d have something to say about that!

  “You lot!” Uhrghul bellowed at his surviving warriors, a bubble of blood trickling from his face as he spoke. “Down the dwarf-hole! There’s humies need killin’!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Not far beyond the deadly gas traps left behind by the goblins, Skanir again called a halt. This time, however, the dwarf stopped them not to warn of another trap, but to announce the end of the road. The tunnel widened before them, expanding to nearly twice its previous size, its vaulted ceiling stretching into the murk high overhead. A pair of immense iron doors loomed in the far wall, richly engraved with runes and sculptures. Despite the best efforts of the greenskins, the image of the long-dead king of Karag Dar was clearly visible. Again, Kessler noted the massive axe the dwarf held, rather than the sword he had expected to find. Bigger than life and cast in iron, Isen Fallowbeard stared forbiddingly from the door of his tomb.

  Skanir stepped forward, running a reverent hand across the figure of the ancient king. The others were not so restrained. At the threshold of the tomb, with the dim hope of treasure still refusing to die from their hearts, the men rushed at the door, caution overwhelmed by greed. The thought of goblin traps paled beneath the lustre of imagined gold. Kessler joined in the rush, determined to discover for himself whether the runefang was there or not, to discover whether Ernst and Carlinda and all the others had died in vain.

  The iron doors were much like those at the entrance of the war-crypt, bent and twisted by the orcs who had violated this place. They leaned against each other like weary children, their abused hinges slowly pulling away from their settings in the wall. Scraps of iron and bronze had been hammered into them to reseal the tomb after the orcs had dumped the body of their warlord inside. Kessler was not surprised to find that they had been pried away in the light of Valdner’s suspicions that goblins had returned to loot their dead master’s grave.

  The men pushed open the abused doors, leaving Skanir in the antechamber to continue his study of the runes that covered them. The flickering light cast by the torches did not penetrate far into the chamber beyond, its high ceiling lost in the shadows, its far walls beyond the reach of the light. What they saw was enough to make them thankful for the darkness.

  No gleaming piles of gold, no overflowing chests of silver, no heaps of rubies and diamonds greeted them. What they found was the musty stink of ancient death, the lingering odour of old bones and crumbling leather. The floor was littered with shards of bone, the empty sockets of smashed skulls staring at them wherever they turned. Shattered skeletons were everywhere, so thoroughly destroyed that it was only with some difficulty that Kessler decided they had belonged to dwarfs. Skanir had said that, as a king, Isen Fallowbeard would have been buried with his hammerers, those of the royal guard who had fallen with him in battle. When the orcs despoiled this place, they had not spared their fury on the bones of their enemies. He wondered which of the shattered skulls grinning at them had belonged to the king.

  Shards of bone crunched beneath Kessler’s boots as he moved into the tomb. Wherever he turned, it was the same, nothing but the wreckage left behind by the greenskins. Not a strip of mail, a scrap of steel or a piece of gold had escaped the looters. If the dwarfs of Isen Fallowbeard’s time had developed the practice of filling their teeth with silver, then even these had been taken. Black despair crushed his last, desperate hope. If the runefang had ever been here, it was long gone.

  Even as he turned away, the glitter of steel arrested Kessler’s attention. He swung around, to be certain that his eyes had not imagined the gleam. No, he had not been deceived. It was there, gleaming from the shadows. More bone crunched under his feet as he ran towards it. The light from his torch gradually resolved shapes in the darkness, the smashed and broken debris of dwarf sepulchres. There were hundreds of them, all around the tomb, but it was the one at the centre that had drawn his attention. The king’s casket must have stood here. The orcs had been especially violent destroying it, breaking the stone casket into great blocks, and fashioning a crude throne from them. The skeleton of a huge orc sat upon it, colossal even in such a desiccated state.

  It was Gordreg Throatripper, ancient lieutenant of the Ironfang. The twinkle of steel caught by his torch had come from this decayed liche. The goblins might have looted everything else of worth in the tomb, but the craven creatures had not dared to despoil Gordreg, even in death. The warlord still wore his armour of steel scales and his helmet of bronze plates and iron horns. The enormous weapons he had carried in life rested against the sides of his throne: a mammoth axe with more steel in it than a suit of plate armour, a massive spiked club with a head bigger than that of an ox, and a ghastly looking flail that the ages had crumbled into an echo of its former terror.

  Kessler looked at the weapons closely, circling around them, trying to find the one weapon that legend claimed Gordreg had inherited from his infamous master. He shifted the club, letting it crash to the floor with a dull echo. He kicked away the remains of the flail, scattering it along the side of the throne. He tried to move the axe, its weight defying even his efforts to move it. Gaining control of himself, he abandoned his futile efforts.

  The runefang was not in the tomb.

  Accepting that truth, Kessler looked again at the skeleton. This time he noted the peculiar positioning of its hands, as though Gordreg were holding something across his lap. In his mind’s eye, he could almost see what it was, a slender length of dwarf-forged steel, almost too small for the huge fist of an orc. It had been here! This was the place!

  Something else impressed itself on Kessler’s mind in that moment. Dust hung heavily on the skeleton, tarnishing its armour and almost covering its weapons, but the warlord’s lap was clean. The runefang hadn’t been stolen by goblins long ago, it had been taken more recently.

  How recently, was revealed to the swordsman when cold, sardonic laughter echoed from the darkness.

  “Looking for something?” a snide, gloating voice asked, rising from the shadows. Kessler saw a man, tall and straight, clothed in a suit of fine chain, with a sneer twisting his classical features. The swordsman let his gaze linger on the man for only an instant, and then his eyes were drawn to what he held in his hand. Despite the dirt that covered it, despite the nest of bones and other barbaric talismans that were tied around its hilt, Kessler could not mistake the weapon that the stranger carried. He had seen Count Eberfeld’s blade too many times to fail to recognise its twin. The man who had challenged him from the shadows carried the missing runefang!

  Other men were emerging from the darkness, producing torches of their own to fend off the gloom. Kessler recognised some of them, knowing them to be the same scum that had twice tried to ambush and murder him. He saw the brigands who had brought down Baron von Rabwald grinning at him with brown teeth. Somehow the vermin had found another way into the crypt and stolen the relic before Kessler could recover it. Then they had heard the Wissenlanders approaching, and had darted into the darkness to lurk in hiding.

  “I must thank you for your perseverance, soldier,�
� Rambrecht told Kessler. “Without your persistence we might never have found this place.” He raised the runefang before him in a mocking salute. “Count Achim will appreciate your efforts, I assure you.”

  Kessler reached a hand up for the sword lashed across his back. The motion brought a warning hiss from behind him. He felt the touch of steel against his neck. Shifting his eyes to follow the cold length of steel, he was soon staring into Ottmar’s unforgiving gaze. There was no mercy or compassion in the sergeant’s face, only the smirking triumph of a traitor revealed. Kessler let his arm drop back down, sighing with defeat.

  “That’s how you escaped and Ekdahl didn’t,” he stated.

  Ottmar smiled and nodded his head. “He was suspicious at the end, which is how I was wounded. It made my story of a narrow escape more convincing though, didn’t it?”

  Kessler rolled his eyes, cursing himself for not questioning the soldier’s good fortune. The brigands were chuckling coming closer, and fingering their daggers and swords. Kessler turned his head, saw Valdner coming forwards, saw Raban holding his axe against Skanir’s throat, and saw Anselm nonchalantly approaching the brigands.

  Rambrecht reached into a pouch on his belt, producing a strip of tanned goatskin, strange marks stained into the hide. Kessler groaned, recognising it as a similar message to the one he had found before they had entered Murzklein. The Averlander tapped the document idly against his thigh.

  “Aside from the dwarf and your men, did anyone else survive the hydra?” Rambrecht asked. Ottmar seemed surprised that the aristocrat knew about the fight with the monster, but quickly recovered.

  “Only the halfling and his ogre,” he answered. “They are back in the tunnels. Both of them are wounded. Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t give us much trouble. We ran into some orcs before entering the crypt. The greenskins settled for the rest.”

  Rambrecht’s expression became smug, pleased by the spy’s report. There’d been enough trouble already. It was about time things started running his way. “We’ll keep the dwarf, he might be able to find us a quicker way out of the mountains. I don’t see why we need any of the others.” The comment brought a murderous gleam to the lurking bandits’ eyes. Rambrecht snorted derisively as he noticed their eagerness. “You can have your men deal with them,” he said, nodding at the mercenaries. He’d seen how competent Baldur’s brigand trash were too many times in the past. Now that he had real fighters, he intended to use them.

  Valdner walked towards the aristocrat, holding his sword by the blade, presenting the hilt to Rambrecht in the Estalian custom. “Begging pardon, your lordship,” Valdner said, “but I’m not taking orders from some traitor, deserter scum.” Ottmar glared at the sell-sword, colour rushing into the sergeant’s face. “I’ll offer my sword to you, but not to this fork-tongued weasel.”

  The Averlander laughed. “I accept your offer of service, captain,” he replied. Rambrecht reached forward to touch the pommel of the offered sword, familiar with the Estalian tradition. He failed to notice the chill that came into Valdner’s eyes as he stretched out his hand.

  Suddenly, Valdner threw his body forward, smashing the hilt of his sword into Rambrecht’s face. The stunned aristocrat staggered back, stumbling as he fought to recover. Valdner did not waste any further attention on the man. With what seemed like a single fluid motion, he flipped his sword into his other hand, catching it by the grip and spinning around. The mercenary’s sword flashed out, raking across Ottmar’s face. The sergeant screamed, his own sword falling from his hand as he clutched at his slashed eyes. Valdner left the spy to shriek on the floor, turning to face foes that were still in the fight.

  At their captain’s attack, Raban and Anselm sprang into action. Raban removed his axe from Skanir’s throat, Nordlander and dwarf both shouting war cries as they rushed at the bandits. Anselm, already close to the enemy, darted forwards while they were still watching Ottmar bleed. The Reiklander’s sword stabbed out, skewering a bandit just beneath the ribs. He ripped the blade free, leaving his foe to scream and bleed, turning to close with another.

  As soon as Ottmar’s blade was gone from his neck, Kessler’s arm shot up and over his shoulder, his hand dragging his zweihander free of its scabbard. The swordsman glared at his foes with a hate stronger than anything he had ever felt in the arena. He did not have time to wonder why the mercenaries had turned against Ottmar and his patron; that was a question that could wait. There were men to kill and a sword to reclaim.

  Rambrecht staggered back, his nose split by the fury of the blow that Valdner had dealt him. More than the physical blow, the aristocrat was stunned by the sudden turnaround. Everything had been going his way. Every card had been clutched firmly in his hand. Now it had all degenerated into anarchy: a wild fray. They had outnumbered the Wissenlanders, could have picked them off from the shadows with arrows, or else simply sneaked away while they were still moaning over the loss of the runefang. Instead, thinking the three mercenaries safely in his pocket, he’d decided to gloat, to rub his triumph in the face of the vanquished. Rambrecht could not deny that he had caused the crisis, but he was too arrogant to accept the blame. He’d teach the sell-sword scum the folly of turning against him.

  Even as the thought occurred to him, Rambrecht reconsidered the situation. His men outnumbered the Wissenlanders, but they were brigand trash against professional soldiers. At a glance, he saw that one of the bandits was already down and another hard-pressed by a mercenary swordsman. If they were going to recover the situation, they had to strike swiftly and overwhelm the Wissenlanders while they still had the numbers.

  The Averlander looked over his shoulder at the two brigands behind him. Instead of finding the eager, feral killers of a few moments before, he saw nervous, frightened men, their blades hanging loose in their hands.

  “Herr Rambrecht, your lordship, sir,” one of the bandits, the frog-eyed Kopff, stammered. “We’ve reconsidered remaining in your employ.”

  “We ain’t dyin’ for you, ya stuffed-up git,” elaborated his companion, Schmitt.

  Rambrecht glared at the two craven curs, but before he could voice his rage, the men were already retreating into the recesses of the tomb, back into the rat-run of tunnels that led to the ventilation shaft. The Averlander started to pursue them, but something, some inner warning sense, made him turn back.

  The full weight of Kessler’s zweihander came crashing down at the aristocrat’s body. More by instinct than thought, Rambrecht brought the runefang around, blocking the murderous blow with the ancient relic. Steel shrieked against steel, blue sparks flashing through the dark, the barbaric trophies lashed to the runefang’s hilt jostling madly under the impact.

  Repulsed, Kessler took a step back to recover and bring the enormous sword up once again. Rambrecht lunged at him with the runefang. This time, the Wissenlander was on the defensive. The zweihander froze in a blocking position, waiting to catch Rambrecht’s blade. The runefang slammed into Kessler’s steel with an impact that roared like the report of a cannon. A burst of sapphire light exploded around the point where the two weapons made contact. Kessler felt a surge of crackling energy pulse through his arms as he was hurled back, knocked through the air as though he’d been kicked by a troll.

  The swordsman crashed down on his back, slamming hard against the stone. Air rushed out of him, black spots bouncing through his vision. The greatsword was knocked from stunned hands, clattering away in the gloom. Kessler rolled his head up in time to see Rambrecht rushing at him, slaughter in the Averlander’s furious eyes. He kicked out his legs just as the aristocrat was swinging down at him.

  Rambrecht howled as his knee buckled, and he was spilled across Kessler’s body, the runefang pinned between them. Kessler could feel the weapon’s preternaturally keen edge gnawing into his armour, could feel the little talismans of bone and rock clattering against his greaves. He struggled to pull the Averlander off him while at the same time keeping him pressed too close to use the runefang. Rambre
cht’s snarling face loomed above him, all the fury of Khaine’s hells in his countenance. The aristocrat twisted and writhed, trying to wrench his sword free, trying to pull clean from Kessler’s greater strength. He squirmed one hand free, using it to smash the swordsman’s face. Kessler felt skin split beneath the vengeful blows and bones crack beneath the wrathful punches. The fractured pieces of his nose ground together, blood bursting across his face. Kessler simply grinned back at his enemy. Pain was too old a companion for him to pay it much attention. If the Averlander thought he was going to break free by hurting him, then he was going to be sorely disappointed.

  It was not the blows to his face that made Kessler suddenly relent, but an icy, clammy numbness that swept through his body. In the struggle, as Rambrecht strove to free the sword, something hard and cold brushed against Kessler’s bare arm. At first, he thought it was just one of the orcish talismans that dangled from the hilt of the sword, but the horrible sensation made him doubt. Strangely, it was not unlike Carlinda’s chill, unearthly Carlinda, but magnified to a terrible, withering intensity.

  Rambrecht pulled clear, darting back from the recoiling swordsman like a cat fleeing from a snake. The aristocrat stood panting, glaring at Kessler with more than hate in his eyes. There was a nameless terror there as well, a terror that made him hesitate, that made him cast a fearful gaze across the tomb.

  Kessler could feel it too, as though the air were growing heavy, deadening all light and sound. The shadows seemed to twist and writhe in ways that he knew were dictated by something beyond the flicker of flame. The sounds of conflict faded as all within the tomb felt the creeping dread clutch at them. Breath turned to mist in the sudden chill, flesh pimpling with goosebumps.