A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  There was no point denying it. ‘As a child, I lived in the forest south of here,’ Methuselech lied, ‘but have spent most of my adult life with my kinsfolk in Qaladmir. My parents are traders, and—’

  His eyes fixed upon the drinking vessel the Majestic Head held to his lips. Under the embellishment of gold and rubies it was clear now that this cup was in fact a human head, preserved in cedar oil, the cavity in its skull holding the strong mead that Yggr sipped.

  ‘Drink,’ he commanded, and held out the head towards Methuselech’s mouth.

  In the normal course of events Methuselech would have shoved the cup down this impudent man’s throat. Yet, it seemed, through no volition of his own, he felt forced to drink. He parted his lips before the lip of varnished skull-bone, and clenched his eyes as the vile fluid was tipped down his throat.

  ‘That’s it,’ Yggr purred in gloating satisfaction. ‘Accept the hospitality of Wreca of Helggestre by drinking from his brain-ball.’

  The liquid was thick and sweet, and much stronger than usual mead. It burnt like fire through what was left of Methuselech’s system, and he was forced to keep his legs closed tightly lest it leak onto the floor. When he finally opened his eyes, all he could see before him were Yggr’s lips curled in sneering domination. Still Methuselech avoided his tormentor’s malefic gaze. He was convinced they had met before; that smile was unmistakable.

  Yggr continued to stare into Methuselech’s downcast forehead, as if drilling into his brain.

  ‘Wreca of Helggestre,’ he repeated, still holding the ghastly goblet before Methuselech’s face. ‘Recognize him? No? You’re not a Peladane then, that’s for sure. But who exactly are you?’

  By now any attempt to keep up the guise of innocent trader was useless. Methuselech had to escape. Bitterly he thought back to his earlier smugness, when he had believed his machinations and contingency plans would be sufficient. How had everything gone so wrong so quickly? From deep down within the Keep he thought he heard voices raised in ire and a savage growling. This was quickly followed by several loud thuds and a high-pitched squeal. His mind raced, recalling there was only one wire-face between him and the stairs, but—

  Suddenly Yggr froze, then, for once, his friable face cracked into a wide, shark-like grin. ‘My, my, MY!’ He coughed in disbelief. ‘Mauglad Yrkeshta, as I live and breathe! We meet again!’

  Methuselech’s eyes bulged, and he turned to sprint away as fast as a hare. But Yggr already had him by the neck and swivelled him back around.

  ‘How the world turns!’ Yggr whispered with a tremor running through his great frame like a tree in a gale. ‘Things are finally drawing together, after all these years.’

  Just then a new presence made itself felt. One of the Children of the Keep had arrived, and approached from behind. Methuselech was as impervious to fear as he was to the effects of the alcohol that was now running down his legs, but, even so, he knew with an absolute conviction that everything, all his plans and even his very existence, was in ruin. It was inescapable.

  The Ogginda reached Methuselech and stared up at him as he dangled helplessly in the iron grip of the Majestic Head. The side of the child’s head had split open, and some stuff one would not normally expect to find in a human head had leaked from the wound and set into a crust down his neck. The child showed no sign of distress or discomfort, and just continued to regard Methuselech casually.

  ‘Is this the one who crushed your skull?’ Yggr asked. It was only then that Methuselech recognized the boy as the child he had kicked against the headstone the previous day.

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  ‘Then, when I have finished with him, you may take him to the schoolhouse and play with him.’

  FOUR

  The Stabbur

  HE WOKE WITH A START, and instinctively cried out. Like a swimmer rising from lightless deeps he gulped in desperate lungfuls of air. Then he opened his eyes wide and stared about.

  It was dark, too dark to discern anything, and so cold he could not feel his extremities. But he was not outside; he could feel wooden flooring beneath his back, sense the closeness of this place and hear the wind rattling a door upon its hinges nearby. There was also a strange, quiet, continuous sound all about him, one that he could not identify.

  His first thoughts were that he was back in the woodcutter’s hut. There was that same feel of rank airlessness and an odd, stale odour that made him want to sneeze. But then his memory returned and with it the full, awful knowledge of the peril he was in.

  He tried to get up and immediately gasped at the fierce burning pain that seared every joint in his body. He was bound hand and foot, in such a way that even the slightest attempt at shifting disabled him with torment. He strained uselessly against his bonds, but whatever bound him was tough and fibrous enough to flay his skin off before it would yield.

  ‘GRITS!’ Gapp spat.

  But he forced himself to relax, take in his surroundings properly, and put all thoughts of the evil of the Keep to the hindmost reaches of his brain.

  Minutes passed. The darkness began to lessen as his vision began to adjust. The palest slivers of light could be made out, coming through several cracks in the ceiling. Vague shapes they revealed, their forms only hinted at. Squat, perhaps man-sized, standing all about. Some of them appeared to be wearing hats or helmets. He froze and drew in a liquid gasp, imagining himself in some kind of pagan temple surrounded by its dreadful keepers. Then he realized that, whatever they were, they were not moving at all. Motionless, they could have been statues or even furniture of some kind.

  Again Gapp found himself yearning for his dear old spectacles, ripped so cruelly from his face back in the Jordiske cave in the forest. Damn this whole region! Am I fated to spend all my time here in the north trapped in some dark prison or other?

  Gapp shivered. It was not just cold; it was freezing. As his eyes adapted further, he could make out the cloud of breath condensing before his face. This place was far too cold for any dwelling of man, even men such as these. But whatever sort of place this was, it was sturdily built, for he could feel not a breath of air from the wind that moaned outside.

  What was that smell? Gapp inhaled deep, drawing the air over his tongue. There were hints of resin, fermented grain, old meat and the mould that grows on damp straw . . . Maybe the smell had something to do with the noise he could hear: a fizzing and popping sound like elderberry mulch turning into wine?

  For a long time he was forced to lie thus, unable to move, unable to do anything except try to steel himself against panic, to banish the fears that brushed ghostly fingers against his mind. He seemed in no immediate danger as yet, but lying trussed on the floor, hardly able to see, he felt as vulnerable as an overturned tortoise. And ‘they’ could arrive at any time, and do anything with him that their sick little minds could devise.

  Who in Pel’s name are they? These lands had always been savage, dark and heathen, but from what he had seen of the town, Gapp knew that something terrible had twisted it, infected it with evil and sickness. Normal people did not live like this, or even look like this . . . It was as if something had emerged from the forest and so warped the Oghain and their lives that they had begun to take on the qualities of a nightmare. Not suddenly, but over years, decades, even centuries, so gradually that they probably were not even aware of it happening to them.

  It all came from the Keep, of course. From the hall of the Majestic Head. Gapp had seen both the doll-faces and the wire-faces – and they were human. Twisted but still human. But those unholy Children of the Keep . . .

  Gapp convulsed at the thought, and his brain instinctively denied their existence. He needed to gather all his wits to escape, even if it meant flaying all his flesh off on these bonds and running away through the woods with nothing but a shirtful of sore bones.

  Where was Methuselech? Had he been captured too? And what about Shlepp and the Paranduzes? Surely they, all together, could beat a path through the Oghain and flee
this town . . . and then plan a rescue attempt? Xilvafloese might not be very interested, but the others would never abandon Gapp. Never let him rot here, floundering at the mercy of those—

  No! Don’t think about them. Keep focused. Stay calm.

  His ears pricked up. What was that? A droning noise, muffled but nearby. He held his breath and listened hard.

  The wind? Yes, it moaned like the wind, rose and fell like the wind, but . . . no, not the wind. Voices. Voices, just on the other side of the wall!

  Again he held his breath. Moments passed – followed by more moments. And then he heard it again. Yes, voices, clearer now, coming from somewhere beyond where he guessed the door to be.

  Gapp strained his ears, hardly daring to breathe. It occurred to him that the voices sounded a little like the Paranduzes. Had they traced him here? His blood pounded faster and throbbed painfully where the rope dug into his skin.

  Minutes passed. There was definitely a conversation going on out there, but still he could not make out whether the voices were human or otherwise.

  Suddenly, for what reason he could not tell, every hair on Gapp’s body stood up, and his blind stare slowly turned to the opposite side of the room. His eyes – so wide and glassy he might still appear to be wearing his spectacles – fixed upon a patch of floor he could not see, and his whole body tautened like a cable about to snap.

  There was someone else, or something, in this room with him, and it was snuffling around like a boar on the scent of truffles.

  Gradually, it came closer.

  With glazed eyes staring sightlessly up at the infinity of the night sky, the bloodied form of Methuselech was dragged away, leaving a trail across the stone floor of the turret.

  Yggr, wiping the slime from his hands and lower arms, watched as it disappeared down the stairwell, the unconscious head bumping on each step. Then he lit a roll-up, took a long drag and closed his eyes as the bitter smoke from the dried sprout-leaf filled every last capillary in his brain. His thick lips parted barely enough to let the smoke escape, and he absently watched it snake languidly upward before being snatched away by the wind. He then picked up the skull-goblet from the parapet and drained it in one gulp.

  ‘Thirsty work,’ he commented, leering at the head.

  After another quick drag, he pushed the roll-up into the head’s earhole and left it gently glowing there. Then lifting the cup level with his eyes, he stared into the expressionless, leathery face as if expecting to see some reaction there.

  The dead eyes of Wreca stared back. Yggr regarded them for a moment then said,

  “Alas, poor Wreca, I slew you well!

  Your cohorts keen upon their quest were not so bless’d as thou,

  Upon that day when darkness fell,

  And hath remain’d so until now.

  With but a careless flick of the wrist

  Bodies broke, ten to a stroke,

  They, from this world, into darkness hurl’d, I so artlessly dismiss’d.

  But for you, my Wreca, no such brutish haste;

  In slow, sweet torture we embraced.

  More care I reserv’d, as you deserv’d.

  The blade of this artist your shuddering flesh kiss’d,

  And as lover’s token, your head preserv’d.’

  Yggr, seeing the bemusement of the wire-faces nearby, frowned and stopped. Most of the Oghain assumed their leader’s painful attempts at poetry were a form of torture, and they were probably wondering why he had dismissed the prisoner before commencing his recitation.

  Yggr’s blue fingernail traced the lines of the dead man’s eye-creases. ‘Would you call me a bad man, Wreca?’ he asked.

  He paused to consider his own question. ‘In my younger days I felt so sure – always up to my elbows in work. But nowadays it all just seems so . . . messy, don’t you think?’

  He looked at the slug-trail of Methuselech’s leaking fluids that glistened in the torchlight, then he turned and leant against the parapet, once again staring out at the sea.

  ‘Well, I suppose it is my job to look after this place, but to be honest, Wreca, I’d rather they all just stayed away. It would save me so much unpleasantness. But, if they do come, well, they can hardly blame me for doing my job, now, can they? I mean, it’s not as if I’m overzealous or anything. Not like the old days, eh? Back then I’d tear their arms off just for fun. I’d sometimes tear their legs off too. It gave me an enormous sense of well-being . . .’ He smiled at the memory.

  ‘But they still need correcting, these people. Ha! I remember the first correction I ever did. Took me days to pick all the fragments of shattered bone out of my face! Still haven’t forgotten, after all this time . . . Ah yes, how he squealed.’

  The distant cry of a bird, a forlorn and bodiless sound, carried upon the wind from somewhere out over the ocean.

  Yggr’s eyes narrowed. ‘So many of them recently too. I just don’t know what things are coming to. Ha, yes, of course I do: the time is near. They know it, we know it, and he knows it. So near, now. Then he will arise, and the time of reckoning shall begin. Especially for those Peladanes.’ He paused for thought.

  ‘Talking of Peladanes, it appears I might even have the pleasure of correcting another of them before long. A nice fat one too, by Mauglad’s description – and the son and heir of a Warlord to boot. Yes, it’ll be good to go to work on – what was his name? Nibulus? You’ll enjoy that, won’t you, Wreca? Seeing one of your own squirm. Oh, he’ll squirm all right. Like a maggot on a hot plate. I’ll milk his gall bladder before his eyes and make him drink it ere death takes him. Drink it from your head, Wreca! Would you like that, eh?’

  ‘I’ll stick to mead, if you don’t mind,’ the head replied in a strange murmur.

  Yggr spat and stubbed his cigarette out in Wreca’s eye.

  He set the drinking cup down and wandered off down the stairs, thinking. Peladanes! How he despised them and their braying sanctimoniousness, hollow boastfulness and risible bravado! Coming here in their polished legions as if they owned the place, bawling their incontrovertible wisdom and stomach-churning piety into the faces of the poor, dumb locals. The self-appointed militia of the world. Ptui!

  What got to Yggr, what truly whitened his knuckles, was how they were so sure of themselves, so utterly convinced of their might and invincibility! If they were so ferocious, why did they need the help of the northmen? If the Greatsword of Pel-Adan was the mightiest of arms, why would it suffer the rustic axe of the Oghain-Yddiaw for company?

  ‘But the old alliance, their Fasces, is long dead. Would the Peladanes be so cocksure now without the aid of the northmen?’ Yggr reckoned not, for he himself knew what it was like to face Peladanes in battle. They were no better than dogs: get them on their own, away from the pack, they were as craven as any skulking cur that whimpered and piddled on the floor. Pathetic!

  All humans were pathetic! Out of all the peoples of the world, it was humanity he despised above all. It would be the disciplined Haugers who would inherit the world before long, and put humans back in the place they deserved to be. Of that he was certain. Or at least would be so were it not for the imminent return of Scathur and his kind.

  Yggr reached the bottom of the stair and abruptly paused. Something had been troubling him of late, and now he found himself pondering it yet again. Over the past few years he had intercepted many parties of adventurers on their way to the Maw – too many for his liking – but while he had been correcting them, not one had confessed to any knowledge of an invasion. No armies, no coalitions, just small groups of never more than thirty foolhardy intruders. Quite often considerably fewer than that. Not at all like the vast hosts of old.

  Yes, Yggr was troubled. Despite a lifelong conviction that humans were essentially herd animals, it did seem that in this new world they were beginning to show disturbing signs of individuality.

  Well, one way or another that new world was about to change. His torture of Mauglad had revealed much, and this approachi
ng Peladane would soon learn that six men were not much use against Yggr’s army.

  He pondered for a moment. ‘What to do now? Watch the children at play with Mauglad or go and visit the boy?’ Or, he could go and oversee the fun and games that Rind-Head was having with the Paranduzes at this very moment.

  ‘But then,’ Yggr murmured to himself, as he turned to leave the Keep, ‘maybe I should go and pay the brat a visit; the smaller they are, the higher they squeal . . .’

  Back in the stabbur the snuffling drew even closer, and still Gapp could not see a thing.

  Seven yards now . . . Six . . .

  His glaring eyes strove desperately to pick out anything in the darkness. Those pale glimmers of light from the cracks in the ceiling still illumined nothing save the squat urn-like shapes along each wall. But it was from the dark aisle in between that the ghastly animal noises came, and no amount of ocular straining could pierce that gloom.

  Five yards . . .

  Gapp slowly drew in a long breath, then let it out, trying to calm the quaking inside him. Remember what Wodeman said about hunting in the dark. Don’t look directly at your quarry; look slightly to one side and wait till you detect movement.

  But nothing. Utter blackness.

  Four yards . . . Three . . .

  Frantically the boy forced himself back against the wall, trying to press his head and the nape of his neck into the cracks between the wooden beams. Panic and heat rose within him, till he could smell the musk of his own sweat.

  Two yards . . .

  On the other side of the door the voices started up again. Gapp tried to cry out to them for help, but no sound came. Then suddenly the snuffling stopped and a moment later was replaced by an evil gurgling. In the terrified boy’s mind it evoked images of slitted, hell-red eyes, lolling tongues and bloodied fangs – a humped back of poisonous bristles, the stench of an overflowing cemetery and a creature that stood on two legs and laughed insanely.