A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  Finwald was now rigid.

  ‘ “So long, and thanks for all the venison,” ’ Gapp quoted. ‘Signed Finwald. That’s what you wrote in that book you gave him, didn’t you, Finwald? That book you gave him along with your meditation wheel.’

  The circle of listeners tightened noose-like around the mute priest.

  ‘And it was this sword that was uppermost in Mauglad’s mind as he drove us on through the forest – a sword he claimed was the most powerful weapon in the world, one that could change history with one stroke, a sword that at all costs must not be allowed to enter the Maw. And do you know what this sword looked like, gentlemen? Why apparently it looked very much like a snake. Sort of wavy, you know?’

  ‘Get on with it!’ Nibulus was clearly irritated by the boy’s histrionics.

  But Gapp had already said all he would. His part of the storytelling was done. It was up to the mage-priest to draw the tale to a close.

  ‘Finwald?’ Nibulus said levelly, hating every moment of this attack on his friend but determined to get to the bottom of it nonetheless. ‘Care to explain, old mate?’

  Finwald apparently did not. He just stood there, unmoving, in exactly the same position he had adopted two minutes ago.

  ‘Finwald,’ Nibulus repeated softly, but more menacing for all that, ‘would you care to tell us more about Bolldhe’s sword?’

  He approached the priest slowly, with deliberation. So too did the others of his small company, those men who had travelled with him so far and through such pain. And as they closed in on Finwald, they could recognize it in his eyes, in his trembling lower lip, in the stance of a trapped animal. They could hear it in his breath, even smell it from his pores: he had deceived them.

  ‘Finwald?’ Nibulus enquired in a voice that began softly but ended in a growl. ‘For the third time, would you please care to enlighten us as to what the hell you’ve dragged us into!’

  ‘I . . . can’t!’ was all the terrified man could manage.

  ‘You will,’ hissed Bolldhe, and he extended the flamberge towards Finwald until its tip almost touched the man’s eyeball.

  Finwald’s stare now moved from Bolldhe to focus on the sword-point less than an inch from his face. An inexplicable calm came over him. He opened his mouth as if about to explain, but then refocused upon Bolldhe.

  ‘I really can’t,’ he repeated, some measure of the old control now restored to his tone. ‘It cannot be revealed. But believe me, Bolldhe, when I tell you that you, or at least one of us here, must use Flametongue on Drauglir.’

  ‘Finwald, stop this!’ Appa shouted. ‘Why are you deceiving us?’

  ‘I am deceiving no one.’

  ‘I can feel your untruth as surely as I can see you standing before me now!’ Appa spat. ‘What is all this nonsense?’

  Bolldhe withdrew the flamberge, slid it back into his belt and carefully but firmly took Finwald’s tulwar away from him.

  ‘I reckon I’ll be using this thing from now on,’ he told the priest. ‘I don’t think I can trust that flamberge any more than I can trust you.’

  Bolldhe snapped his lantern up into its sleeve and directed the strong narrow beam directly into the mage-priest’s face. Finwald flinched under the light, almost recoiling, but he tried nevertheless to outface the company. They stared back at him, they stared at him hard. In the harsh glare of the lamp they could study his face in detail. What they saw there stilled them, puzzled them, even shocked them.

  Like them Finwald had gone through some extreme hardships to arrive here, but unlike them, he had faced and overcome these trials without even the slightest faltering of his resolve. Yet, now they saw for the first time a strange anguish in the priest’s eyes and a hopelessness in the set of his mouth that they had never witnessed before. It was as if they were seeing each taut nerve of his courage stretch to its limit, and one by one, snap. For the first time since any of them had known him, Finwald had clearly lost control – of everything.

  All of a sudden Shlepp leapt up and whirled around to stare into the darkness they had forgotten still surrounded them. The low rumour of his growl set the air around him pulsing, his nose dilated and snuffled frantically, and ice once again clamped the entire company’s hearts.

  Don’t say they’re back already! they prayed to their separate gods. Please don’t say they’re back!

  The Vetters and their steeds now also picked up the scent that had caught Shlepp’s attention and without a word being spoken, without any apparent fear or hesitation, they drew closer to any of their kind who bore the torches distributed to them by the humans. In groups the Vetters then spread out and advanced towards the place where they could sense lay their enemy.

  In awe at their new allies’ courage, the men held back. But they knew there was nothing else for it. Weapons were taken up, straps refastened, tattered nerves secured, and any thought that this was all happening far too soon after their last ordeal battened down fast. Every human soul in that chamber – including the now-disarmed Finwald with Paulus’s bastard sword at his back – readied himself and followed the Vetters.

  With the searchlight beam of Bolldhe’s lantern lighting his way from close behind, Shlepp padded with dreadful purpose down the cavernous hall ahead of them. There were no noises to be heard yet, but others with keener noses than the humans were becoming increasingly tense.

  Radkin and Ted pushed through the throng to locate their young friend Gapp. The Vetter blacksmith grasped Gapp’s wrist firmly and hauled his arm up to see what the boy was holding. In the light from a torch the bronze machete shone with a dull gleam, the blacksmith’s signature just visible on its blade.

  ‘Yes,’ Gapp whispered. ‘I never go anywhere without it.’

  Ted nodded in approval and patted the lad roughly on the shoulder. He then put his mouth to the boy’s ear and whispered, ‘Mycel-Haug.’

  Gapp’s eyes met those of the Peladane. ‘They’ve detected humans,’ he translated for him.

  ‘Scathur’s wire-fellows,’ Nibulus whispered, then began creeping forward, till Radkin tugged at his arm.

  ‘Dorcht-wela,’ he trilled and imitated the thumbs-up sign he had seen Gapp use now and again.

  ‘Encouraging news,’ Gapp reported. ‘He says there aren’t many.’

  ‘Good, but can he smell other things?’ hissed Nibulus. ‘Dead things maybe, or that Scathur?’

  Gapp translated as best he could, but the two Vetters were becoming a little confused. They were not sure now what smells they were picking up.

  ‘Move!’ Nibulus commanded in a louder voice and marched on ahead of the company.

  The lantern now began to pick out strange shapes from the darkness around them. There were niobium pulpits in the likeness of winged fiends, around which the very air itself swirled in shades of violet and gold. There were idols of netherworld denizens engaged in unspeakable acts of violent copulation. Here and there were stairways that spiralled up to the loftier reaches of the hall only to stop dead, leading nowhere. Some even emerged horizontally out of the walls; others still hung upside down from the ceiling.

  Edging the chamber now was a kind of arcade or ambulatory, the upper level of which was a clerestory punctuated with lunettes through which poured an infernal light that came from some unknown source. Below these ran a walkway that had been smashed in places by the invading Peladanes, yet, unlike the plinths seen earlier, which had ‘rotted’, this appeared to be healing, with fresh pink marble growing out in rounded stumps to bridge the gaps. Below the ambulatory, supporting the entire structure, were columns that looked for all the world like membranes, which smelt of old blood and appeared to pulsate before their very eyes.

  ‘There are toadstools in the woods back home that can turn a man’s mind inside out if eaten raw,’ Wodeman whispered to the old priest at his side, ‘but none that I know of that could beget nightmares such as this.’

  The whole company pressed on, eyes straining, weapons at the ready.

  Sudden
ly Bolldhe said, ‘Isn’t that a pair of hips sticking out on either side of that pillar?’

  They all stared. Sure enough, Aelldryc, the tiny-headed but massively hipped sister of Eorcenwold, had been detected. Though all twelve of her cohorts had selected pillars broad enough to hide their bulk, only one of her gender could have been both vain and deluded enough to believe that a twelve-inch-diameter column might conceal her twenty-four-inch-wide hips.

  Nibulus nodded. ‘I’d recognize those bolster-like pins anywhere,’ he whispered. ‘Seems like our friends from Tyvenborg don’t know when to stop.’

  ‘You know anything about this little ambush, Finwald?’ Paulus hissed into the priest’s ear.

  Finwald, with a blade at his neck now, moaned in what sounded like genuine disbelief. ‘How in Cuna’s name did they get in here?’ he breathed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nibulus grinned evilly, ‘but I know which way they’re leaving . . .’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ wheezed Appa. He still had nightmares about the thieves, and was not sure what he wanted done about them, holy man’s conscience or no.

  Nibulus glanced over to the mercenary. ‘Kill every last one of them,’ he said coldly. ‘Right, Paulus?’

  The mercenary’s single eye twitched, and he nodded his immediate and whole-hearted assent. Englarielle too, though he knew nothing of the newcomers, signalled his willingness and that of all his people. Now at last they could do something they understood, something the Vetters were good at. Without a sound they slid up onto their steeds.

  ‘And this time,’ Nibulus went on, ‘we have our own army.’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Appa croaked. ‘We can’t just—’

  ‘DEATH TO THE TYVENBORG BASTARDS!’ Nibulus roared, and the company surged forward, taking up his cry.

  A second later a stocky figure stepped out of concealment with a blunderbuss braced on his shoulder. The next instant the chamber exploded with a terrible thunderclap of noise. Many were flattened to the ground or glued to the spot by the blast alone. Nibulus was knocked over when a fragment of shot rang off his pauldron, and two of the Cervulice doubled over with strangled cries of pain, throwing their startled riders. But three less fortunate Vettersteed, taking the full force of the discharge, went down in a spume of blood and flying tissue, dead before they had time even to scream. One unseated rider would not be getting up again that day or any other.

  Before anyone had time to gather their wits or even grasp what had happened, the rest of Eorcenwold’s band stepped out from behind whichever pillar, plinth or pulpit had been shielding them. Cerddu-Sungnir the Half-Grell leant casually against his column and let fly a volley of five quarrels from his crossbow. Hlessi the Grell loped forward and fast-bowled one of his throwing axes in a lightning-fast overarm spin. With a flick of his wrist, Khurghan the Polg sent his double-bladed haladie boomeranging into the advancing enemy. Meanwhile, Flekki the River Hauger had flung three of her poison chakrams.

  At the same time Aelldryc, their disproportionately shaped giveaway, appeared at her brother’s side and began pouring a flask of some sticky green liquid over the stock of her brother’s musket while he firmly gripped it at arm’s length. A veritable steam-demon of noxious green vapour billowed into the air, enveloping the two of them.

  The effect of the ensuing missile discharge was devastating. A wave of the Peladane’s allied force went down in that first salvo, it seemed, but Nibulus bellowed like a raging buffalo, and his followers surged forward with even greater madness against the enemy.

  With neither haste nor apparent fear the Tyvenborgers withdrew. They had come for plunder not battle. Not one of their number had been harmed, and they intended to keep it that way. Ghost-silent and swift as hares, they vanished into the darkness.

  ‘Bitch-born scum!’ Nibulus yelled at their backs. ‘Toerags!’ But none that carried torches could keep up with him. Though incensed by his losses, Nibulus was a seasoned enough soldier not to head alone into that darkness against such an enemy. Instead he almost ripped the bow off his back, fitted an arrow to it quicker than even he would have believed possible and let fly into the gloom.

  It was a wild shot and served mainly to assuage his impotent fury. Nevertheless, Nibulus could not help punching the air in triumph when he heard a scream issue from the darkness. It was a very small victory, to be sure, but its insignificance did not abate Nibulus’s battle joy one bit. His red face glowed with satisfaction as he shouted out orders: ‘Appa, sort out the wounded! Bolldhe, get that lantern over here and stick with me from now on! Paulus . . . Paulus, where the hell’s that sneaky little priest got to?

  Where, indeed?

  Not even Finwald himself really knew where he was. Or what he was doing. Or how in the name of Cuna’s almighty eye-staff everything had fallen apart so completely in the space of mere minutes! Years of careful work laid to waste by something so tiny and unforeseen . . .

  That boy! That snot! That smarmy, short-arsed, know-it-all little puke-brat! Why the hell couldn’t he have just stayed dead?

  But no, Gapp Radnar, the least among them, had not stayed dead. He had somehow survived where others greater than himself would likely have perished. Furthermore, he had, beyond all probability, stumbled across a small part of Finwald’s secret. And as if that were not enough, the boy had managed to drag his worthless little carcass all the way here to the inner sanctum of Vaagenfjord Maw just to start telling tales!

  Reeling with disbelief at how unfairly things had turned out, Finwald stumbled on blindly, heading away from his companions. That he had travelled all this way with them only to fail right at the end! But fail he had. For what could he possibly do now? The game was up for him as far as that lot were concerned; there was absolutely no going back to join them now. Their voices were already fading behind him, fading into his past, and here in this blackness he was completely, utterly alone, and completely, utterly without any plan.

  It was as though the entire world, his world, had winked out of existence, and he was now the only thing floating about in an eternity of space.

  Nauseous with fear, despair, disorientation and not least from the vile and unnatural fragrances that clogged the air, Finwald blundered on through the heavily scented darkness.

  What am I to do? What can I possibly do now?

  The voices behind him gradually faded to nothing. It was then the voices ahead of him began to be heard.

  Got to form a new plan. Cannot give up yet, he told himself.

  His scheme had come wholly undone, but there had to be something he could do. There had to be.

  The voices ahead of him grew louder, and it did not seem as if they were aware of their silent torch-less pursuer. Further they continued, somehow drawing him on as a distant lighthouse summons a drowning swimmer in a dark stormy sea. Then the beginnings of a new plan did indeed form in Finwald’s head.

  Flametongue was out of his grasp now. He could only hope, pray, that Bolldhe, or somebody, would use the sword as Finwald had instructed. But for himself it was vital that he find some new companions.

  After all, he reasoned as he sped noiselessly after the escaping thieves, if Bolldhe could switch sides so easily, as he almost did back in Eotunlandt, then why can’t I?

  Ignoring the dark all around him, Finwald plunged on towards whatever Chance had in store for him.

  The thief lay face down on the ground, teeth clenched in a silent grimace of agony as blood welled from the deeply embedded arrow. It was pitch dark without the meanest hint of light to see by, but the Tyvenborger could feel only too well that familiar sensation of nausea spinning the whole world around.

  Damn those Peladanes! the thief cursed, spitting blood between chokes and gasps. It had been such a perfect hit-and-run too. Who would have thought such a lucky shot was possible? And the rest of the thieves had just carried on, disappearing into the secret places whence they had emerged, not realizing that one of their number had fallen.

  Got to get up! Got to
get out of here! Hvitakreust, the pain . . .

  The thief stiffened in fear. The agony, the disappearing Tyvenborgers, approaching enemies, everything was suddenly forgotten, everything save the abysmal blackness of this pit and the new presence that drifted out of it.

  Oh, you’ve fallen down, a silken thread-like voice hissed with a humourless leer on its non-existent lips. Here, let me help you up . . .

  The thief stiffened even more, his extremities feeling as if they were about to snap like icicles. There followed a stomach-heaving sensation as of a red-hot needle passing into his brain but without actually penetrating either skin or bone. Thereupon the presence eagerly began searching about for the thoughts that lay therein. Searching with all the delicacy of a boar rooting for acorns in the loam.

  The thief’s mind screamed out, Get out! Get out! Get out of me! and fought with every last ounce of determination and typically Tyvenborgian savagery to rid itself of this unspeakable intrusion. Eyes tightly shut, fingers clenched claw-like, the victim stifled the grunts that tried to force their way out through gritted and bloody teeth. Yet all the while the intruding shade howled with laughter at these puny attempts at resistance.

  It was of course useless. The spirit of Mauglad Yrkeshta now clung like a limpet to the inside of the Tyvenborger’s skull, and nothing in the world could be done about it: the new possession was complete.

  Ah good, still alive then, Mauglad purred in a tone that suggested fine silver strands of cobweb being stroked by a spider’s claw. But thankfully not too much alive.

  Possession. Dominion over the dying, a hold over the half-alive, sovereignty over the semi-dead. Not so alive, so vital, that they could resist, yet alive enough to inhabit – for though Mauglad might raise, summon or even direct the Dead, their empty husks and empty minds were no good for him if he wanted to take possession.