A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  Bolldhe turned away. He’s gone, he thought briefly and ran on. The heat and the horror crushed in upon him as he staggered ahead, and he felt his heart and lungs must burst from his chest at any moment.

  An instant later everything changed. A wave of electrical energy rolled up out of the river of fire and transformed the very air about them. Hair, beards, even the wool fibres in their clothes, all rose crackling as if alive. The bubbling and steaming stilled, and the howl of the wire-faces were transformed into wails of terror.

  Bolldhe’s legs buckled beneath him, and he pitched forward onto the jagged obsidian surface of the ledge. For a moment he lay there stunned and bleeding, and everything was still. All sound receded from his tiny world save the pounding in his ribcage. Then the dreadful commotion began once more: an escalated seething of the swelling magma, the panic-stricken shrieks of the Ogha and a new voice – the triumphant and demonic laughter of their leader . . .

  And then a sound that rose above all else: a monstrous screech that set the cavern’s very foundations a-quake and splintered every icicle of glassy rock. Men dropped their weapons and covered their ears, cowering on the ground in petrified impotence.

  After a moment Bolldhe raised his head from the floor and squinted through the black pall of smog that belched from the dyke. Disorientated, he turned this way then that in befuddled panic. Then his streaming eyes discerned the shades of men stumbling through the choking pall: the enemy fleeing in the madness of their fear, their leader cursing them but refusing to follow, and his own companions flattening themselves against the wall and staring aghast at the thing that had risen from the river of fire.

  To the Oghain it was known as the Fyr-Draikke, the bringer of the end of all, their own ragnarok. As one, they ran screaming back the way they had come. Some, in the blindness of their panic, blundered over the edge of the path and tumbled into the orange-white magma below.

  For Scathur, though, this apparition was Gruddna, the great sentinel, the final and absolute defence against any that dared to approach Ymla-Myrrdhain. Had any pillagers ever come through the Moghol alive and further managed to endure the heat of Smaulka-Degernerth, then this is what they would encounter next. And nothing or no one that came from outside Drauglir’s realm had any power against it.

  Let the Ogha run. Scathur smirked. I have no need of them anymore.

  From its home in Lindormyn’s breast it had travelled up the chute that sluiced the river of fire to darken the cavern with its apocalyptic awfulness. Yet it was not in itself a creature of fire, but a vast foul undead thing that might once have been a wyrm. Gigantic wings, tattered and limp as the cannon-blasted sails of long-sunken galleons, stretched out to fill the hall, and from its pinions draped skeletal corpses from yesteryear whose blood poured over bone and gristle. For such hostages that had been ‘spiked upon pinions’ claw’ no escape from torment had been granted; no soft worms nuzzled their flesh, no cool marsh drew them down away from the burning light.

  Barely concealing the broken framework of bones stretched folds of skin, in patches hard and leathery, in other places softened to a jelly-like slime, but all black, running with putrefaction and drenched with the blood of its corpse-like adornments. Within this splintered skeleton organs pumped and churned, swollen with dark green ichor potent enough to dissolve stone and rotten to the core. And throughout its body horned and razor-toothed maggots the size of eels squirmed in frenzy.

  The monster rose from the dyke with slow, foul-smelling beats of its wings. Its massive head reared up on a serpentine neck that bristled with lethal spines, seeking out the enemy it was to destroy. It was a head nearly all mouth; what little hide remained on its lengthy snout was wrinkled with malice, and its blackened teeth dripped with suppuration from its festering gums. As it turned its gaze upon the men on the ledge, they saw in its eyes only a mindless hunger for destruction, and they were smitten with total petrifaction.

  Further it rose in the air, its viscera trailing beneath it just as on that historic day five hundred years ago. Never once did it take its awful stare from its prey. Then, as Scathur howled in jubilation, it deposited its entire sodden bulk upon the ledge just before the doorway. It had blocked their escape – and now came for them.

  ‘NO!’ Methuselech cried. ‘THAT IDIOT, WHAT HAS HE DONE? OH, BY ALL THE ELDER POWERS, MY SOUL!!’

  Vetters and Cervulice scrambled away from their leader, finally repelled by the terrible mania in his tone. He lurched to his feet then collapsed forward onto the ground. The sudden movement had snapped both his legs, yet he floundered upon the floor trying to haul his body back down the tunnel with his handless forearms. Gapp and Englarielle stared at each other, then looked back dumbfounded at the broken man-thing before them.

  ‘Seelva?’ Englarielle whimpered in total confusion.

  The cry of the Fyr-Draikke had roared like a screaming hurricane up the tunnel of Lubang-Nagar, flattening all therein to the ground in terror. But there was a power of greater subtlety and more immediacy here, housed in the disintegrating ruin of Xilvafloese’s corpse.

  From that place of fire at the end of the tunnel continued the thrashing and bellowing of Gruddna, but amid this could just be detected the sound of another’s voice, equally dreadful and exultant. The company in the tunnel remained impotent, incapable even of fleeing. Yet still the corpse of Methuselech crawled on, leaving a slimy trail of itself on the floor, heedless to all but its purpose.

  The keep all about them quaked, static surged and crackled in the air, magma churned in its molten trough and flared gouts of fire against the stone walls, and the cries of the D’Archangels blackened the world. And it was amid this chaos that Gapp focused upon the putrid heap that was Xilva as it jerked and slithered down the tunnel. And an image – no, a recollection – switched on in his mind: a moonlit figure among the trees, poison-eyed, ring-bedecked, a long mace at its side and a bat’s nose sniffing for blood . . . Leeches crawling towards him!

  ‘Mauglad!’ he breathed, and Gapp at last began to understand.

  He could not explain why, but as he rubbed the itchy scarring on his wrists from which Mauglad had drunk so frequently he guessed that the spirit possessing Methuselech’s body all this time was not evil, was not in league with the Rawgr after all. It had been allied once, as was clear from its knowledge and understanding of this place, but that had been a long time ago – before Drauglir had cast it out, before Drauglir had himself been cast down. Now, after endless empty days of banishment in the deep and desolate ravines of the wilderness, the houseless shade of Mauglad Yrkeshta had at last contrived to come home. Not to rise up and gather power once again, but simply to sleep, to put an end to all those centuries of unwanted abhorrent existence. How could anything that so yearned to cease from being, that had striven so hard for a merciful release from this world, be either good or evil?

  Well, if it’s death he wants, Gapp thought, he’ll certainly find it down there! Though not knowing how the spirit of Maugland could embrace true death, he guessed that confronting whatever monster lurked down there would probably do the trick.

  On, slowly, down Lubang-Nagar did Mauglad crawl, little more than a slug upon a vast plain. At that speed the monster would surely be gone by the time he arrived.

  A voice suddenly hissed back up the tunnel: ‘Radnarrr . . . help me.’

  Gapp was enraged. Fear, sickness and exhaustion had frayed his sanity to tearing point, and he boiled with an anger the like of which he had never known before.

  ‘You want to go?’ he raged at the corpse. ‘You really want to go down there? Good! Then I’ll help you. Oh yes, I’ll help you, all right!’

  He charged down the slope to Mauglad and yanked him up by the arm. At long last now he would be rid of his slaver!

  A noise behind him caused Gapp to pause. It was Englarielle. The Vetter was clearly clueless as to what was going on in this mad world but at least understood that the leader of this enterprise needed his help. Grabbing Mauglad�
�s other arm, he slung it over his shoulder, and the three of them stumbled down the tunnel.

  ‘Th’ sssword . . .!’ Words bubbled amid the oily discharge that leaked from Mauglad’s mouth. ‘Th’ sswor’! Let no’ the tall captain gain th’ sswor’. Tell Bolld’ or Finwa—’

  And then his lower jaw fell off.

  ‘Yeh, yeh,’ Gapp muttered in irritation, and together they staggered on down Lubang-Nagar.

  Over the splintered shards of obsidian the Fyr-Draikke dragged its trail of gore towards Appa, the closest to the doorway. Paralysed, the little grey man could do nothing but stare helplessly at the grisly hell-spawn that bore down upon him. As it approached, his face contorted with an expression that would have better suited a bawling infant, and a thin cry like a steaming kettle issued from his lips. His companions, strung out along the ledge, could only gape, weapons dangling uselessly from limp hands, as Gruddna closed in upon the old priest.

  But a new power now entered the Hall of Fire, and it seemed that the whole of Melhus Island shifted upon its axis. Sensing this the Draikke screamed and wheeled around, its great tail smiting the rock wall above Appa’s head and showering him with scree. There in the doorway, for all to see, stood Mauglad Yrkeshta, sometime high necromancer of Vaagenfjord Maw but clad in the crumbling husk of Methuselech Xilvafloese. And to either side of him, holding him up, stood Gapp Radnar of Nordwas, and Englarielle Rampunculus, Cynen of the Vetterym.

  Appa collapsed beneath the shower of stone. Wodeman, closest to him, fell to his knees. Bolldhe and Nibulus, further back along the ledge, sensed the transformation in the air but could not begin to guess what was happening. And Paulus and Finwald, who alone were close enough to see who had entered, screwed up their faces in total bewilderment.

  But Scathur realized only too well who it was. Though himself too far away to see clearly, he understood fully who had returned from the dead to stand among them once again.

  ‘You!’ he cried, fear entering his voice for the first time in centuries. Then, after only the fleetest whisper of vacillation, he charged towards the Peladane, the bearer of the sword.

  Gruddna, meanwhile, appeared in some confusion. Grunting, it writhed and thrashed at the air as though assailed by an invisible tormentor. The corpses that dangled from its pinions became animated and gyrated in an obscene dance of death; they moaned in a hollow, desperately forlorn elegy, a threnodic lament that echoed the discordant harmonies of wind in far-off tunnels, and their rotten fluids rained all about in a grey-brown diffusion.

  The monster staggered closer to the river of fire then reeled back from the very edge of the dyke. With a sudden spasm it flung back its head and sent forth a howl of such fury, pain and despair that great fissures split the roof of the cavern, and all, even Scathur, were levelled to the ground as reeds before a tempest.

  All except Mauglad. Though the two who had supported him now cowered in the shadows, their burden, now abandoned kneeling on the floor, remained unbowed. His handless wrists held together in the manner of one in prayer, Mauglad appeared calm within the eye of the hurricane that raged all around him. He moaned wordless incantations from the ruin of his mouth, and the effort of his concentration was deeply chiselled into every fold and line in his face.

  The Fyr-Draikke gathered itself up and sprang towards its tormentor, desiring only to smear this wretched intruder across the cavern floor. But Gruddna was now a creature of the undead, and over even this colossal manifestation of world-ending horror the necromancer held mastery. Fyr-Draikke and black priest screamed in torturous conflict, their voices and power intertwining, fusing, spiralling through the air, cancelling each other out. Only Mauglad had potency enough to face this leviathan that Scathur had brought back into the world, but it was a struggle that was rapidly destroying them both.

  ‘Nibulus!’

  The warning came from someone somewhere, and just in time the Peladane heaved himself from the ground where he had collapsed and turned to see the white-robed captain coming straight for him. He immediately leapt to his feet, grabbed his Greatsword from where it lay on the path and stood his ground once again.

  Behind him, Paulus had also gathered his wits and bounded over the trembling forms of Finwald and Wodeman with sword held high. Viper-fast, he ducked under the sweep of the Fyr-Draikke’s massive tail, rolled beneath its contorting belly and, with a savage snarl, arced his bastard blade deep into that mess of cold churning vitals.

  A hoarse cough exploded from Gruddna’s throat, the trophy corpses flew from its pinions and its entire body buckled. A freezing gust of soul-wind screamed out of Methuselech’s collapsing form, bowled Gapp and the Cynen over, and wailed its way up along Lubang-Nagar. And Methuselech’s eyes, his own once again, stared through the carnage and fire to pick out the shape of his friend Nibulus. With a resounding cry that came from his soul rather than his broken form, he uttered his final words: ‘Death to the Green Ones!’ And, at last, died.

  Then the air folded in upon itself, and their world exploded into a noiseless void of blinding light.

  When their senses were returned to them, the reunited company awoke to a transformed situation.

  The Fyr-Draikke was now still, nothing more than a steaming pile of offal upon the ledge. Its trophy corpses were busily legging it off in any and all directions. Methuselech’s body was gone, simply not there, though the stone door jambs adjacent and the floor beneath them were decidedly darker and stickier than before.

  And Scathur, who had once believed his master’s chambers unassailable by any, now glanced around in genuine fear, standing as he was amid these strange new enemies who had somehow managed to breach all his defences. Who they were he could not imagine, but he did know that this was not a fight for himself, alone, with neither his wire-faces nor the Children in sight. Hesitating for not one second, he fled the cavern as swiftly as he could.

  The unseen eyes of the Skela focused upon Bolldhe as he picked up Flametongue from the ground and walked dazedly towards the doorway.

  ‘Looks like Plan B failed, then?’ one of them suggested to the red-eyed figure nearby, who merely nodded ruefully, and disappeared.

  ELEVEN

  Stained-Glass Demons

  IT WAS A REUNION that none had expected nor even imagined. And after it had occurred, there was scant certainty among the seven travellers that it actually had happened at all. For they had just been snatched from fire, havoc and unimaginable horror, and these moments they were now experiencing were more precious than any reunion.

  As the undoing of the Fyr-Draikke spread its melting wreckage across the rock, the six men had staggered from the boiling cauldron of Smaulka-Degernerth to plunge through the doorway at last. Up the steep incline of Lubang-Nagar they had toiled, not even letting their exhaustion halt them until the worst of that insufferable heat was behind them. Then, gasping, cascading with sweat and shaking, they gulped the cooler air deep into their scalded lungs and revelled in the soothing darkness into which they had been delivered. For the first time that day they realized beyond doubt that they were still alive.

  Nibulus lay sprawled on the ground retching with exhaustion. With his Tengriite armour and the burden of his sword Unferth, his encumbrances had been the greatest by far. He was now so completely spent that he could not even begin to remove the armour that entombed him in its roasting grasp.

  After a while he succeeded in opening his eyes, then raised his head sufficiently to peer around at this new place they had come to. Someone had managed to get Bolldhe’s lantern both alight and set on wide focus, so the tunnel around was lit up by a little sphere of soft yellow light.

  Incredibly, they were all still alive, he realized, in spite of everything set against them. The Fyr-Draikke was destroyed, that horrifying captain and his host, whoever or whatever they were, had fled, and – if his reckoning was correct – they had actually succeeded in making it all the way to Ymla-Myrrdhain. He was so astonished he might have laughed out loud.

  Mi
ght have laughed had it not been for the torment he could see in his men’s eyes. Around him they huddled, eyes hollow and staring, dumb with shock. Blow upon blow had been heaped on them, and this was their first chance to dwell on it.

  Both Bolldhe and Finwald had apparently given in to hysteria. In the case of Bolldhe this manifested itself in a twitching body and a thousand-yard stare, while Finwald was sobbing openly. Nibulus’s own throat began to spasm as he looked on. He had witnessed these reactions before on the battlefield and knew well what they were going through.

  Wodeman was not so easy to read. There was a frown on his face and he kept prodding himself all over. Though Nibulus did not realize it, the shaman was trying to convince himself that he was actually still here, among the living. All of him. It was said among the Torca that if a man should travel too far from his homeland or experience too much fear, his soul might depart his body and wander the earth until such time as it might be located by one of those with the seeing, and be encouraged to return to its body. If this was true, Wodeman reflected, then his soul must be halfway across the Giant Mountains by now.

  As for Appa, how that scorched old moth had managed to survive Nibulus would never know. Maybe there was some truth in this lightbearing stuff after all. But what a sorry state the old priest was in, to be sure. Though one hand was still closed limply around his talisman, for once he was not chanting or rapping it against his ring. He was clearly too far gone, too shocked to do anything but whimper and sob, and stare emptily into oblivion.

  Nibulus squeezed his eyes shut against the tears. Pel-Adan, how they had all suffered! The fire previously in his men’s eyes had dimmed like an arctic sun dipping beneath the grey waters of the ocean, and it would be some time before the first glimmers of a new dawn might herald the sparking of fresh courage within them.