The men waited while hulking shapes stomped down the passage, their steps more cautious than the blind charge of their scout. Catching the scent of blood, the guttural snarls began again. A barking growl was followed by relative quiet.
“It’s the warlord,” Skanir whispered, “six or seven others with him.”
“You can tell what they’re saying?” Kessler marvelled.
Skanir shrugged. “Kill enough of them and you pick a few things up. This lot wants to rush in and kill us, but their boss isn’t sure how many of us are left. It seems he’s got bigger ideas than just stirring up a fight.”
A gruff voice snarled out from the depths of the tunnel, though Kessler would have sworn it was the bark of some beast rather than anything truly intelligible. Skanir’s face grew drawn as the dwarf struggled to concentrate on the primitive speech, trying to work his mind around the unpleasant task of making sense from the violent growls of an orc. When he did, all the light went out of his eyes. Kessler had never seen a face so resigned to death as that which Skanir turned to him. More than death, it was the look of someone who knows he has brought doom to everything he believes in, everything he loves.
“It’s Uhrghul Skullcracker,” Skanir snarled, all the ancient hate of his race in his voice. “He wants the runefang.”
“Give it to him,” Raban growled back. “If he agrees to let us go.”
“He’s offering us a quick death,” Skanir shot back. “Besides, we can’t let him have the sword. To you, it’s the runefang, but to his kind it’s something else. It’s the Blade of the Ironclaw, a warlord so terrible that even the lowest goblin still remembers his name. With a talisman like that to rally the greenskins, Uhrghul can put together a war host the likes of which hasn’t been seen in lifetimes.” Skanir clenched his fists tight around the haft of his hammer. “We can’t let him have the sword.”
Kessler looked away from the tunnel, at the sorry remainder of their company. “I’m afraid there’s not much we can do to keep it from him.”
“Then we do like Raban says,” Valdner said from where he lay against the wall. There was a sardonic humour in his eye as he watched the shocked faces of his comrades. “We can’t keep it from him, so let’s give it to him.”
Cautiously, the orcs came marching from the tunnel. Hulking masses of swollen muscle and lurking violence, their beady eyes squinted at the flickering torchlight. Powerful hands held axes and cleavers at the ready, fingers twitching in eagerness to spill blood and butcher flesh. The greenskins gave voice to barking bursts of laughter when they saw the sorry condition of the men who had thought to oppose them. Only their leader, the dark-skinned beast that was Uhrghul remained on edge. The voice that had called back to him had been that of a dwarf. He had enough respect for the tough, foul-tasting stunties to know that they never gave up easily. They knew enough to understand that dying was better than giving up, it was the one reason he respected them. Still, they could be as tricky as an old goblin if pressed into a corner. This one had certainly been pressed into a corner with nothing but a few dying men and a wounded ogre to keep him company.
Uhrghul had given his warriors strict orders not to kill anything until he had the sword. After that they could start working off their frustration from traversing the trap-riddled length of the tunnel. Until then, the warlord wanted to puzzle over what kind of trick the dwarf had up his sleeve. Maybe he’d cut off an arm and have a look.
A sharp whistle drew Uhrghul’s attention to a little figure standing beside a pair of massive iron doors. It looked like a young human, but Uhrghul gave that fact sparse attention, his eyes riveted to the heavy blade that the little thing was struggling to hold. The creature yapped at him in the snooty language of the humans. Uhrghul didn’t understand the meaning of the words, he didn’t know that they were “If you want it, come and get it!” He only knew that the little creature tugged open one of the doors and dashed inside, taking the sword with him.
The warlord had enough sense to recognise a trap when he saw one, even if he didn’t understand how it worked. His warriors, however, had displayed their inability to do the same quite eloquently in the tunnel, leaving half a dozen of their comrades scattered through the corridors. Unfortunately, they knew full well what Uhrghul was looking for and why. Each one harboured ambitions, each one imagined itself as warlord of a mighty waaagh. As they saw the halfling dash through the door, carrying the runefang, every one of them gave voice to a savage cry. Thoughts of slaughter and ambition were forgotten as they charged the door, bursting through it and into the tomb beyond.
Cursing, Uhrghul rushed after his greedy warriors, his arrogance refusing to allow another orc to claim what he had already decided belonged to him. He understood there was some sort of trap at work, but he trusted that his faithless warriors would bear the brunt of it, leaving an open field for him to recover the sword.
As Uhrghul charged through the doors, they slammed closed behind him. Ghrum pressed his entire bulk against the panels, blocking them against retreat. The howls of the monsters as the tempest of swirling bone tore into them reached the ogre as a faint murmur.
“The runefang,” Kessler cursed. He took a step towards the door, but Skanir held him back.
“It was lost to us either way. Now, at least, the orcs won’t have it.” Skanir stroked dried blood from his beard, staring again at the door. “I didn’t think the little fellow had it in him. He’s bought us all our lives.”
Kessler turned reluctantly from the door. “Maybe, but that won’t help save Wissenland.”
“One battle at a time, Kessler,” Valdner said. Raban all but carried his captain as they started towards the tunnel. “For now, I’ll be content with an open sky over my head. The ugly thing about tombs is that you never know how long you’ll be staying in them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Vultures scattered into the air, croaking their displeasure at the men who emerged from the black opening of the war-crypt. The birds did not fly far, but found perches on the rocks. As Kessler hobbled out of the gloom of the crypt, he felt their hungry, expectant eyes on him. The swordsman staggered on, until his weary feet carried him to a large rock that had been torn loose from the cliff, one of the few spaces not littered with the bodies of men and orcs. Raban helped Valdner limp across the plateau to where Kessler was sitting. The injured mercenary grimaced as the Nordlander lowered him to the ground, cursing foully as a wound in his back began to bleed again. He waved away Raban’s efforts to staunch the flow.
“Soon enough they’ll have something else to pick clean,” Valdner commented. The boldest of the vultures had already descended back to the plateau, tearing at the mangled bodies that coated the ground. Raban threw a rock at the nearest bird. The vulture hopped away from the breast of a soldier, settling on an orc’s back. It watched Raban with its glassy eyes, and then began to rip at the greenskin’s bloodied flesh.
“Maybe you should have taken the Averlander’s offer,” Kessler said. The swordsman nodded his head sadly. “At least then the runefang might not have been lost.”
Valdner stared hard at Kessler. “There are some things more important than gold, even to a mercenary. I lost men because of the Averlander’s treachery, good men who had fought beside me for many years. There is a rough sort of honour that even sell-swords abide by. More than the bonds of loyalty and honour, however, there was the question of blood. Ever since Fritzstadt, I’ve been bound to your quest by ties older and stronger than your own. Ernst, the Baron von Rabwald, was my brother.
“Half-brother would be more precise,” Valdner continued before Kessler could react to the revelation. “Ernst’s mother, the baroness, was always a frigid, domineering woman. After producing an heir to the title, she considered her wifely duties at an end. Our father, the old baron, took a mistress to warm the bed his wife shunned. When she bore him a son, the baron raised the child with all the consideration and care with which he indulged his legitimate heir. I was raised very much as
Ernst’s equal in every matter and as we grew up, I became his closest friend and confidant. Of course, the baroness resented my presence, but she could never prevail upon my father to send me away.
“It was when the baron was killed hunting wolves during the winter of my twelfth year that my life came crashing down. The baron was scarcely in the ground before his wife sent my mother and me away. Over the years, Ernst would conspire to send money to us, allowing us to sustain ourselves. When my mother died some years later, Ernst invited me back to Rabwald, despite his mother’s wishes. Ernst’s intentions were good, but I knew there was nothing for me in Rabwald, so I enlisted with a mercenary company. The training and education I had received while my father was alive allowed me to prosper in the profession. Eventually, as you know, I became captain of my own command.”
As Valdner gave voice to his memories, a bitter melancholy grew within him, and a glaze came across his eyes. No longer did they stare at Kessler. What they focused upon were the phantoms of dead yesterdays and lost tomorrows. “I wanted to reclaim the runefang more than you could understand,” he said at last. “I wanted to bring it back to old gold-grubbing Count Eberfeld and say, ‘Here, here is the salvation of your land, bought with the blood of Baron von Rabwald. Baron von Rabwald, who was a better man than you.’ I would do that to honour my brother, to enshrine his name in the lore of our land. I would have made the people of Wissenland remember him into the days of their grandchildren!”
The emotion taxed Valdner, and he slumped back against the side of the rock, fingers closing a little tighter around the worst of his wounds. “At least that is what I would have done had we captured the prize,” he sighed.
“No good to mourn the lost,” Raban commented. The hairy Nordlander paced among the dead, closing the dead eyes of men and kicking the stiffening bodies of orcs. “The runefang is as gone as your brother. It is certain death to go back into that tomb. Only a mad man would dare to challenge whatever fell sorcery infests it.”
Kessler struck his knee in desolate frustration. “Then there is no way to stop Zahaak,” he cursed. “Wissenland will burn, its people put to the sword, because of my failure!”
“Unless you don’t need the sword.”
Kessler spun around, staring in perplexity at Skanir. While the men had made haste to put as much distance between themselves and the forbidding crypt as possible, the dwarf had lingered behind. The swordsman had thought that perhaps he had been trying to reason with Ghrum, to convince the ogre to leave the antechamber. The ogre had resisted Kessler’s efforts to make him see reason, stubbornly determined to hold the doors of the tomb closed against the orcs while at the same time insisting that he would wait for his friend Theodo. How the halfling would survive the maelstrom of black sorcery and flying bone, or how he would get through the doors that Ghrum was keeping closed, were questions that the ogre was unwilling to set his mind to considering.
Skanir, it seemed, had not stayed behind in the antechamber for long. Now, he was perched atop a pile of rubble, inspecting the runes carved into the archway above the war-crypt’s entrance. His stumpy hands brushed against the stone in subdued reverence. He motioned for Kessler to come and see what he had discovered.
“It’s been bothering me,” Skanir said, “looking for a sword when King Isen Fallowbeard is clearly depicted wielding an axe against Zahaak. The dwarf wasn’t born who would make that kind of mistake on the ornament of a king’s tomb! So I decided to look closer. I couldn’t make out enough on the doors in the antechamber, but I can read enough of the runes here to tell you that what we were looking for isn’t the runefang. It never was.”
A strange mix of alarm and hope made Kessler sprint towards the dwarf. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. Skanir didn’t seem to hear him. A broad smile spread beneath his blood-stained beard. He jabbed a thumb at Kessler’s chest.
“It looks like you picked up some souvenirs down in the tomb,” Skanir laughed. Puzzled, Kessler looked down at his body. Caught in the buckles of his armour were several strands of thin chain and crumbling leather. Tiny talismans, finger bones, old coins and bleached fangs, were attached to the strands. Kessler remembered the crude totems the orcs had fixed to the runefang’s hilt. He remembered the struggle with Rambrecht, when the sword and its trophies had been pressing against his chest. The talismans must have torn off when Rambrecht wrested the runefang free.
Then Kessler’s eyes were locked on one talisman in particular. It was a curved, crescent-shaped bit of stone, polished to impossible smoothness, deep grey in colour, but streaked with vivid veins of gold. Kessler did not even try to imagine the skill it had taken to carve the single rune the stone bore, to capture that radiant, sun-burst image so that its every curve was displayed in the vibrant gold, native to the stone. He was too busy staring at it, drawn into the masterless craftsmanship and the aura of power and antiquity that clung to it. As he touched the stone, he felt the faintest echo of the sensation he had experienced in the tomb, just before Gordreg Throatripper had risen from his throne. He sensed that some terrible force was connected to the stone, but that the force was spent, at least for the moment. Whatever menace was attached to the stone, for now, it lacked the power to strike.
It was an effort for Kessler to lift his eyes from the stone in his hand, to look again at Skanir’s grinning face. The dwarf’s thumb was pressed against the figures carved into the archway. Kessler saw again the sinister aspect of Zahaak, and the heroic Isen Fallowbeard opposing him. There was the great axe in the king’s hand, and dangling from the haft of the axe a curved, fang-like object. Kessler’s eyes were wide with wonder as he looked again at the stone in his hand.
“Zonbinzahn,” Skanir nodded, “the Sun-Tooth. Alaric carved it, sure enough, but it wasn’t one of your runefangs. It was a war-rune, a talisman to increase the power of an already mighty weapon. The art of crafting such powerful relics was all but lost even in Alaric’s day. He must have used one of the elder runes to craft the Sun-Tooth, runes of such power that no runesmith dares carve them more than once in his life. That was the power he gave King Isen Fallowbeard to wield against Zahaak Kinslayer!”
After the misery of such defeat, Kessler could barely dare to hope that Skanir was right. The thing he held in his hand, the small smooth stone, could it really hold the power to destroy Zahaak? He thought again of the dread apparition that had appeared in the tomb. Zahaak’s sending, a spectral vessel of the wight lord’s wrath. Had it been to stop him from escaping with the runefang, or the little smooth stone that old Gordreg had fitted to its hilt?
Then it struck Kessler. The smooth, crescent-shaped stone, with its bright, sun-burst rune! The Sun-Tooth! A stone shaped like a fang, its surface pitted by a single rune! Their quest had indeed been to find a runefang, but not the runefang! What strange caprices of fate had caused both relics to become intertwined, so that hunting for one brought them to the other? What equally malicious twists of fortune had caused Grudge Settler to be lost again in the very moment of its finding?
Kessler might have laughed, but looking away from the Sun-Tooth, his eyes found something that killed his humour. A shadow, huge and bestial, loomed up from the steps of the war-crypt. It took a step into the light, blood dripping from dozens of gaping wounds, armour hanging in ragged strips from its tattered body. A single, beady eye glowered in hate and rage, while a torn jaw snapped open in a snarl of fury.
Before Kessler could shout a warning, the orc’s axe was in motion, slashing out in a butchering arc. The blade caught Skanir just below the waist, hurling the dwarf from his perch on the rocks. Skanir crashed into a gory heap, one leg folding beneath him at an obscene angle. The orc barked a grisly laugh and stomped out of the shadow of the archway. Through the ragged, dripping wounds that peppered the monster’s body, Kessler could see the gleam of bone, and the wet shine of pulsing organs. How the monster had escaped the sorcerous death trap that infested the tomb, Kessler could not guess, but only the savage, stubborn vi
tality of an orc kept it standing.
The swordsman quickly stuffed the Sun-Tooth down the breast of his tunic and pulled his greatsword from its sheath. Mangled as he was, Uhrghul Skullcracker managed to twist his face into a brutal sneer. The orc had not failed to hear the sigh of exhaustion, or see the look of strain as Kessler’s weary muscles rebelled against him. He snickered again as he saw Valdner struggling to rise.
Raban’s axe nearly chopped the sneer from the orc’s face. At the last instant, the brute staggered back, catching with his shoulder a blow that was meant for his skull. The Nordlander’s weapon bit deep into Uhrghul’s flesh, crunching into the bone beneath. The orc howled in pain, closing a fist around the haft of the man’s axe. Raban twisted his body, trying to free his weapon from the monster’s inhuman strength. Uhrghul struggled in turn to swing his weapon around and bury it in his enemy’s back. A deadly dance ensued, Raban striving to free his weapon while the orc tried vainly to turn him within reach of his own blade.
Summoning such strength as he had left, Kessler rushed to Raban’s aid. Uhrghul caught the flicker of motion from the corner of his eye. Roaring like a trapped bear, the orc swung around to answer this new challenge. The violence of the motion caused Raban’s axe to tear free, taking much of the orc’s shoulder with it. The warlord bellowed again at the incredible pain. Halfway through his turn, Uhrghul spun back around on Raban. Unbalanced by the freeing of his axe, the mercenary was unprepared when the orc barrelled into him. Uhrghul’s powerful jaw snapped shut around Raban’s face, the knife-like tusks stabbing through his flesh. The mercenary’s scream boomed across the canyon as Uhrghul wrenched his head back, ripping away most of the man’s cheek and nose.
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