A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  So, after a week on the ice, Eorcenwold’s party had finally arrived. This had been horrendous, so bad that Eorcenwold had subsequently questioned his own decision not to requisition the whalers’ boat, cram the best of his men into it and attempt to sail right around the coast of Melhus and arrive by the fjord. But they had chosen to stick together, and thus they continued.

  Great had been their relief then, when they at last reached Ravenscairn, and even greater their relief when the door yielded to their onslaught.

  Eorcenwold and Oswiu were slowly regaining their senses. For a while Oswiu remained flat on his back and did nothing but blink like an idiot. Eorcenwold, however, then raised the pair of them to their feet. Flekki quickly checked them over for damage, then nodded. ‘Nothing broken, nothing split; I pronounce you well and fit,’ she chirped in her strange sing-song croak.

  ‘Yes, thank you, little Hauger,’ Eorcenwold said. ‘You too, Brecca, well done.’

  Brecca managed a quick gurgling laugh, his neck glowing blue with embarrassment. Eorcenwold’s eyes, if not his mouth, were smiling at their skilful locksmith with a kind of respect. Yes, at long last, Brecca had proven his worth. Adjusting the great shield upon his back and hefting the other onto his right arm, he set his jaw defiantly. He had justified his presence here, but his work was only beginning. They had come here for plunder, like everyone else, but unlike all those other fools, the thieves of Tyvenborg knew where to find it.

  For they possessed the one and only thing that could get mere mortals inside the inner reaches of the Maw. They had with them the Testament of Khuc.

  It was about four years ago now that a party of thieves had journeyed from Tyvenborg to the Maw, lured, as so many others were, by a resurgence of interest in the dark angel Drauglir. That had been a larger group than Eorcenwold’s and was made up mainly of Grell and Half-Grell. Previous groups had rarely got beyond the outer reaches of the Maw, which were by then derelict and entirely plundered of anything valuable. Grell being what they were, possibly the most greedy, brutish and ill-favoured race in Lyndormyn, these previous bandits had come armed with an arsenal of hammers, mattocks and pickaxes, with the intention of simply bludgeoning their way through to the inner levels. For it was here they were convinced lay the fabled secret rooms that even the searching Peladanes had never found. The Maw was unbelievably huge, everyone knew, and the Peladanes – though they had ransacked the place with a thoroughness only their sort could achieve – had not possessed the expertise of thieves in discovering secret rooms. Or indeed the food supplies to sustain them a long time in searching.

  So the Grells had set to work with their tools and with their brawn, an industrial demolition machine driven by the hot coals of unlimited greed. But after weeks of frenzied work, severe privation and a continual but unspecific sense of fear that was slowly driving them mad, though they indeed smashed their rude way into some hitherto undiscovered chambers and retrieved a little loot, they had not managed to penetrate the inner places where supposedly lay the ‘real good stuff’.

  But there was one thing that they had found, one very small mean-looking item discovered in among a pile of old rags and bones huddled in the corner of a secluded room near the dock. Almost overlooked, it was a rolled-up bundle of oiled leather, ancient and withered, which, when they opened it up, appeared to be a collection of vellum sheets covered in writing.

  None of the thieves had the patience, wit nor even the desire to read what was inscribed on these fragile fragments, which were partly disintegrated, barely legible and in a tongue they possessed no knowledge of. But what caused them to fetch it home with them was that among the writing there were also diagrams. So, months later, this document had arrived safely at Tyvenborg, and before long fell into the hands of Brother Oswiu Garoticca. Guessing its significance, Oswiu had paid a considerable amount of money for it, and very soon he had arranged for the fragments to be translated by the Tyvenborg chapter of seers.

  It transpired that the sheets were not vellum but simply scraps of soft leather cut or torn from old clothing into the semblance of writing sheets. And the writing was not writing at all but engraving probably performed with some crude improvised tool unsuitable for the task. Like the snapped shard of a broken knife? It must have taken the scribe some days to set everything down, clearly driven by desperation to pen his last words before death took him.

  The document was in the old tongue of the Oghain. This was an obscure language even by the seers’ standards and, what with the decrepitude of the leather, had also been very difficult to read. So the translation was, by the seers’ own admission, somewhat patchy and open to misinterpretation. But, if it was authentic, then that would date it to the time of the Fasces. Moreover, it had apparently been inscribed by one of the very Oghain-Yddiaw who had fought at the siege five hundred years ago.

  And it went like this:

  Friend – can I call you friend? For we have never met nor ever will, but in these my final hours I have a yearning for friendship such as I have never before known in my life, nor even [illegible]. And you, whoever you are – sweet, beautiful, living person – are the last one to whom I may speak. So you will forgive my presumption, I hope, and suffer me to address you as friend.

  (Alternatively, I could call you acquaintance.)

  Whatever. Friend, I am dying, alone and in the dark, utterly forsaken in this awful [hell] that is deserted by men. But, alas, not by Evil. For the Evil yet lives on. I alone may know this, for I alone have seen it.

  The shining warriors, they believe in their pride that they have defeated the Rawgr and all his [stain]. And of Drauglir that is true, for I myself have beheld his gargantuan lifeless husk with my own eyes. But there is one yet that has not perished, and skulks now within the peak above the Rawgr’s hall. For upon Scathur, that [crude remark] captain of hell, I have also looked, though still I can hardly believe it.

  But what has brought me to this lonely end, this most miserable, frozen starvation in which my only comfort is setting down this my final testament? What folly could have taken hold of me so? For I, Khuc of Wrythe, did not become Akynn-Lord of the East Jarl by such dire recklessness. But it is true that, in the days after Drauglir was slain by his own captain, while the lords of the south went about their destructive business, I alone of the Yddiaw stayed behind, though all my people had been [sent home?] by the High Warlord. Whether it was in recognition of my high rank, or finally yielding to my eloquent persuasions, but the Peladanes did finally allow me to stay on while they searched the enemy’s stronghold.

  And oh, what I found there! Scathur, we had all heard, on being caught in the very act of slaying his own master, had fled the Rawgr’s hall before the grim horde that issued from Lord Bloodnose’s mighty [hole]. Up the great flue that ascended from the infernal fireplace he disappeared, like a thief in the night, climbing the rungs set into the stone but, with a terrible strength in his pernicious fingers, wrenching them out beneath him as he climbed. And as he tore each out, he would hurl it down on the heads of his eager pursuers, who therefore had no way of climbing after.

  Scathur had made good his escape. By the time the Peladanes reset the rungs and climbed after him, he had of course eluded them. At the top of the rungs the flue inclined around so that it ran almost level. But this passage was now blocked by a succession of [great stone blocks] lowered from cavities set at intervals in the passage roof. By extracting the rungs, Scathur had gained himself the time to reach the far end of the flue and set into motion a crafty mechanism that deposited these huge obstacles.

  For many days I tarried there, assisting where allowed while yearning to find out more. And when finally those blocks had all been levered up back into their cavities and there reset, and held, there was naturally no sign of the dark fugitive. The flue ended by opening into Smaulka-Degernerth, the great Hall of Fire. There was nothing to be seen save the sheer drop to the river of searing magma running below and a ceiling of rock above. No escape, it seemed, no
t even for a rawgr. Such heat there was even up there that none could endure long enough to properly examine the ledge from which [it was assumed] Scathur had hurled himself, perishing in the fire rather than suffering himself to be taken by the enemy.

  None could endure, that is, save I. No, I do not boast, for it was this, my strength, my determination, that led me to my undoing. Had I been less tenacious, you, friend, would not be reading these same words now.

  Yet what was I to do or say? Would Scathur have devised this elaborate escape-way simply to end his own existence in the fireplace? I thought not. I knew he was up there somewhere. Heedless of the danger and heat and the noxious fumes I had to endure there, I slipped back out onto the ledge when none was looking.

  True to my reckoning, I found a way. It was at first only a few [hand-holds?] along the rock, with a great drop below straight into the white-hot death. But resolute I was, and I followed it, though burning my hands terribly as I scrambled along.

  Crying in pain I continued, until – Gyyrdznakh be praised – after but a minute or two I came to a hidden path. This narrow ledge was mere yards away from the flue’s exit but, around a protrusion of rock, out of sight of any who stood upon the flue ledge itself.

  Along this new path I made my way up, until shortly I had reached the very roof of the Hall of Fire. Hastening, for I was now in great pain, I followed a new passageway as it plunged into the cooler darkness. Thence, heading up and up, I came unto the chamber that I now know lies within the very peak of [Ravenscairn].

  I grow weak. My hands barely grip. I must be brief if I am to finish ere I fade. A small chamber lay at the head of the passage. No one in it. A door on the other side. Open. Ice-wind cooled me. I went out. Outside again at last. Top of Melhus. Snowfield. Night-time. Walked some way, sucking in the air. So sick with heat and fumes. Collapsed. Asleep. When awoke still night. Almost dead with cold. Door now closed. Looked in, saw Scathur sobbing in ruination. He saw me not. But how [Tobacco burn. Sorry about that. Will refund.] Fled in terror.

  Weak. Bad lungs. Could hardly walk. Wandered for days. Each night near killed me. Trapped foul birds for food with [unknown word – possibly a form of archaic harpoon], so kept alive. Many days later found way down fjord to harbour. All ships, all Peladanes gone. Only myself. Tried to catch fish, bird, but so weak.

  Now I hardly think right. Will die soon. Whoever you are, whenever you are, I send love down the years, across continents, and a message of great import . . . [Illegible from here on.]

  So there you have it. The Testament of Khuc, complete with diagrams of the portal into Ravenscairn and the path to the very heart of Ymla-Myrrdhain, Drauglir’s inner keep. Indeed, to the very chamber in which he had died. If he could believe its authenticity, Brother Oswiu Garoticca had in his possession the only known record of a secret way into Ymla-Myrrdhain, a way now known only to himself, to a group of ageing, quill-fingered seers and an Akynn-Lord who had died five hundred years ago.

  A secret way! A thing craved by generations of looters ever since the Peladanes had sealed off the inner keep.

  But it was not solely by the contrivance of the Peladanes that Ymla-Myrrdhain was cut off from the world. Of the few groups who had recently gained access to the Maw, none had apparently gone very deep. Always they had been forced back by some obstacle or another or they had simply never returned. It was therefore widely believed that some great power had been reawakened to guard the inner places, some dark entity that was so much more insurmountable than the mere physical works of the Peladanes.

  But this, maybe, provided a way. And that is why the Tyvenborgers had come.

  Eorcenwold, as always, proved the leader. Few people even of the Thieves’ Mountain would follow Oswiu Garoticca, that black-souled, pig-faced, slug-breathed necrophiliac. In any case Eorcenwold was, in his own unremarkable way, one of Tyvenborg’s finest. He may not have been the strongest, brightest, most dextrous or charismatic man in the Mountain, and was by no means the tallest. But he was a solid bloke, solid in both body and mind, and people trusted him. He listened to people, asked their advice and was not too proud to admit when he was wrong. And though he had a voice that could peel bark off a tree at fifty paces or shout a lammergeyer out of the sky, he was no bully: what he did, he did to get the job done.

  Cuthwulf and Aelldryc were automatically included in the expedition. Aelldryc could be a bit slow: her head was too tiny to contain a sizeable brain and her massive hips gave her an awkward, un-thiefly gait similar to that of a torpid lizard climbing up a mudbank in the chill of an early morning. And her brother Cuthwulf possessed a mean streak that sometimes perturbed even Garoticca. But they were both family, and their loyalty was thus ensured.

  As was that of Klijjver. His was an interesting story. Tusse society, though mainly nomadic, was divided into many castes according to which animal was herded. The highest caste, the Dhurghnadh, herded the red bison, that most prized, near-deified beast that featured in all inherited aspects of pan-Tusse culture, from their most ancient and hallowed myths down to the humble bison-head toggles the children wore on their kirtles.

  Klijjver, however, came from the Boyles, the very lowest caste, who herded dogs. Their livelihood, such as it was, derived from dog meat (which was stringy and tended to bite back several days later), dog sausages (dog intestines filled with dog blood and dog nail clippings) and, most famously, dog dairy products: thin dog milk, bitter dog yoghurt and hard dog cheese.

  Dog cheese was their speciality; it had evolved a culture all of its own and was dear to the Boyles. Lupers’ Hill was the venue for the annual dog-cheese-rolling game, an event in which a large piece of cheese was rolled down the frighteningly steep western slope of the hill and wild young braves would chase it with reckless abandon in the hope of catching it before it reached the bottom and thus gain a prize. This would have been an exciting event had they rolled rounds of cheese and not wedges, as they did.

  Boyle life was hard. They were both pariah and feared, particularly the oversized Klijjver. It was after he had been trying to sell dog crackling at a human settlement near Hrefna that Klijjver had first met Eorcenwold. The poor Tusse had been driven out of town with pitchforks and grain flails by the enraged villagers chanting, ‘Man’s best friend! Man’s best friend!’ These were decent village folk who knew that a dog’s lot was not the pot but rather the post by the farm gate, to which they would be chained all day and night, especially in the winter. Anyway, even the nine-foot-tall Klijjver had been terrified, and it had only been the muzzle of Eorcenwold’s blunderbuss staring them in the face that had persuaded the good folk to return quietly to their homes.

  This had guaranteed him Klijjver’s loyalty for life.

  Cerddu-Sungnir the Half-Grell had come along at Cuthwulf’s invitation, and he in turn had invited Hlessi. Cerddu-Sungnir possessed possibly the most bizarre and lethal arsenal in all of Tyvenborg, and Hlessi was just plain nasty, so the pair of them were about as close to Cuthwulf’s heart as he could hope for. As for the others, they had been chosen for their various skills. They were a mixed bag to be sure but, unlike the party from Nordwas, had a single purpose to unify them and one leader to bind them.

  The thieves of Tyvenborg, a careful blend of strength, skill, stealth, psionics and vicious savagery, had now almost reached Drauglir’s chamber.

  So, within the space of twenty-four hours, no less than five separate parties entered the Maw. From the sea cave far below, late in the evening, emerged Methuselech and his small army. From the mountains high above, a little later, arrived the Tyvenborgers. From the front gate, approached at dawn the following day, the men from Nordwas. From the sea, later that day, sailed Scathur and his host. And from the air, later still, Kuthy, Elfswith and Ceawlin flew in.

  Each and every group entering with an entirely different motivation.

  Yes, it seemed Vaagenfjord Maw really was the place to be, that season.

  EIGHT

  Knackered

  THE INST
ANT BOLLDHE STEPPED over the threshold into Vaagenfjord Maw, his sword burst into flames.

  ‘Soddin’ hell!’ he cried out, at the same time tossing the weapon away from him as though it were a viper. The others almost leapt out of their skins at his shout of alarm, then brought up their weapons.

  All stared at the burning flamberge as it clanged noisily upon the black flagstones, flickered for an instant, then was extinguished.

  Miles away, out on the dark ocean, Scathur leapt to his feet and gripped the haft of his bardische in trembling hands. His eyes bulged out of their leathery folds, but nevertheless he stood with his gaze fixed on that spot. The headland of Vaagenfjord was still not in sight and would not be for several hours, though the coast of Melhus drifted slowly by on their right, but Scathur did not need eyes to recognize what had befallen.

  The enemy, he knew, had just entered the Maw.

  With the clang of the sword still echoing far into the great chamber, the company stood stock-still upon the threshold, staring at the weapon. For a long while no one dared move. They stood there open-mouthed, not even sure that they had really just seen – Flametongue now being back to normal – what they imagined they had seen.

  At length the silence was broken by Bolldhe, one small voice in the yawning immensity of that place: ‘What, in the name of Cuna’s celestial hole, was that all about?’ he bleated weakly, and glared round at Finwald and his companions.

  Blank stares, dumb expressions – they did not know either.

  Finwald went over to the sword and carefully picked it up. His long fingers enfolded the hilt, pale grey over black. There was a look of unconcealed admiration, almost reverence, in his eyes as he held it up before him. A slight breath escaped his lips.