A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  Huddled tightly in the fireplace, they waited and listened, and as much as possible gathered the tatters of their courage about them.

  So it was that Bolldhe found them. No ‘huge black shapes the size of ogres’, no ash-haired poleaxe-rawgrs dancing amid the flames, no Scathur. Just the thieves of Tyvenborg and their sorcerous new leader, their aura mutated by the devilry therein.

  Just grab the flamberge, give it to Eorcenwold, and then he can do the job! Finwald’s mind screamed, now so giddy he could hardly stand or breathe. With determination, deliberation and a purpose strong enough to ‘beshiver the ice of the Wyrld’s Boundes’, he stepped out of the fireplace and came for Bolldhe.

  But he had been too slow, too careful. For at just the moment he became aware of the presence of Scathur and his army, so too did Bolldhe. All it took was that one second of instinctive hesitation and a glance towards the door, and when he looked back at Bolldhe, the man was staggering away from him with his hands over his ears, away towards the ziggurat.

  Too late . . .!

  The sound of a multitude fast approaching the chamber swelled the air, the Peladane’s men disappeared into the darkness, and the priest of Cuna – the tomebearer – stood transfixed, unable to make a decision. Cursing through slitted lips, he retreated back into the fire pit.

  Nibulus had not seen the Tyvenborgers. At least he had not seen them in their true form, for like all those of the company who had approached the fireplace, the bewitchment of the chamber lay heavy upon his eyes, his mind and his soul, and his perception of them was as ogrish spirits that arose mantled in the flames of hell.

  But though he had not recognized them, there had been something else in the air (possibly the sour smell of leather jerkins steeped in layer upon layer of rancid sweat) that had sown unconsciously in his brain a tiny image of the thieves.

  Whether he recalled it now, here in the bedlam of conflict, upon the very point of their destruction as the rawgr captain came for him up the steps, he could not be sure. But something did call to Nibulus’s mind the damp and florid face of Eorcenwold and that great cavernous mouth with its bawling voice of command. That was a voice that could not be disobeyed, a roaring voice that might melt glaciers, hold back the tide, awake the dead . . . or even halt them in their tracks.

  So as Nibulus viewed the carnage all around him, the writhing sea of Dead, the inhuman hatred of the wire-faces, the blood and the death, it finally struck him: if there was but one time in his life to prove himself the Thegne he was expected to be, one focal point to all his training, his expertise and his bloodline, one chance to earn his people’s respect, not to mention his pay, then this was it. And if there was one way to do so, he realized, it was to cast off his pride and bellow just like a thief.

  Leaping back up to the next tier of the ziggurat, he ripped the thresher from its belt-hoops and despite the insane press of surging bodies around him somehow managed to slip it over the crossguard of Unferth. Then, filling his lungs with acrid air, filling his face with boiling blood and filling his soul with every last atom of passion, he let fly the war cry that was in his heart:

  ‘Slaughter them! Wipe them out! Obliterate all! Butcher! Kill! Destroy! Maim! Crush! ANNIHILATE!! For the love of God, BREAK THAT SCUM!!!’

  As war cries go, it may not have won any awards, but it captured the gist of what the Peladane was trying to get across and, as such, did the trick. It cut through the clamour, the terror and despair, it swept aside differences in faith, language and even species, and the final exhortation was immediately taken up by all those within earshot, whether they understood the words or not.

  It was then that it happened, that it really happened. For, Aescal or Tregvan, north or south, beast or man, hands were clasped across the divide and all were one. Every man, Vetter, Cervulus and Parandus then bellowed out the war cry with every last flicker of ardour in their soul: ‘BREAK THAT SCUM! BREAK THAT SCUM! BREAK THAT SCUM!’

  ‘AND NOW,’ the Peladane howled in maddened jubilation, ‘KILL THE BASTARDS!’

  That was it. Nibulus the son of Artibulus had succeeded. Down from their skulking perch his army descended, rallying around his lofty dragon helm, weapons raised high and eyes red with fury, and they drove into the enemy like a juggernaut. Sword, axe and spear hammered down upon the withered foe, hurling them back down towards their captain, who now floundered wondering just what could have gone wrong.

  As they smote with berserk passion, the defenders screamed their blood-song of defiance, screamed out their love for life, screamed till their hearts must surely burst and fiery blood spray from their mouths. And it seemed that a multitude of voices cried out with them, the voices of the entire world of all peoples of Lindormyn – the small, the ordinary, the forgotten – that suffer injustice daily and endure the grinding despair of helplessness that is its bedmate, but who now rose up and roared a chorus of absolute defiance, of refusal to simply lie down and suffer anymore.

  Uttering a throaty bellow, the Peladane swung the chain of the thresher around his head with all his might and joined his followers. How he excelled. As he swept the weapon contrived by Kuw Dachs in rapidly widening circles through the smoke until the choking pall fled in blackened slivers, he went through every oath he knew in less than ten seconds, from religious profanities through to lavatorial expletives, sexual obscenities and finally to the strange weather-based curses that he had heard so often when he was campaigning abroad. Then, tilting its chain slightly, he finally brought the thresher to bear. On and on he swung it, roaring like a dragon, all the time his green Ulleanh flying around his shoulders. In their scores the enemy went down like wheat before the harvester.

  Then out of the black pall of fire-tinged smog plunged the flying Wyvern, enkindled by the heat of the Peladane’s oaths, and her wings unfolded to smite the Oghain with a nightmare memory of the Fyr-Draikke. Swooping low she came at them with open beak and ripping talon, and upon her back sat the twin stormriders of their apocalypse: Elfswith with winnowing blade and Kuthy with reaping bow. Like a ploughshare the half-huldre furrowed the enemy’s ranks, while his companion sent arrows in unending succession into their harried midst. Between them these three swept through the maggot horde in a wide swathe, clearing a path for the Peladane and his men to continue the harvest.

  Braced against the rip tide that threatened to overwhelm him as his army surged back down beneath this terrible onslaught, Scathur stared up in disbelief. It came to him then that the power of fear he held such store by could be overridden and turned back upon itself. For it is one thing to use fear to drive folk, but quite another to steer them with it.

  As Finwald, too, was discovering at exactly that moment. His illusions had cracked the whip of terror that the thieves absolutely would not defy so that the only thought in their heads had been immediate flight. But now that he had cut off their escape did the fool mage-priest truly believe they would simply reassemble under his orders and charge into battle?

  No, he really had overdone it with his phantasms, had over-terrorized them, and they now huddled in the fireplace, unable to do a thing save stare aghast at the nightmare scene of fire, smoke and swooping shapes before them, trapped in this mean little space until such time as one or more of the enemy might turn and notice them.

  Which will happen at any second, Eorcenwold thought, his face ruddy with exhaustion and fear. But it can’t happen! We have to find a better place than this to make our stand!

  It was the Peladane’s war cry (the passion rather than the words) that provided the trigger Eorcenwold needed. He turned to face his thieves, and to him all faces turned. In their eyes they begged for a solution, a way out of this nightmare, but in his eyes they beheld only profound sorrow and perhaps a plea for their forgiveness.

  ‘Wizzerd!’ he barked at Finwald, ‘think you could be of any use here – for a change?’

  Before he had even finished his challenge, a glow emanating from the fingers of the mage touched the weapons of the thi
eves. All weapons leapt into the hands of their wielders as though with a life of their own, and a radiant power surged through them. They lengthened, grew barbs, hummed with a new sharpness and positively screamed in new-found blood-thirst.

  Then, as if imbued with some residual overspill of enchantment that newly radiated from their weapons, the thieves felt a thrill of excitement run through their entire bodies, so intense it left them gasping for breath.

  So for the last time, one very last time, the voice of Eorcenwold sounded loud and clear: ‘To the Peladane!’ And with his morningstar in one hand and blunderbuss in the other, the thief-sergeant turned and loped out to meet the enemy.

  ‘We can’t!’ whined Raedgifu. ‘We can’t!’ His protest was echoed by Brecca, but it was too late. A bell-toller, one of those calamitous fiends deafening everyone in the hall, was closest to their leader’s path, and to their satisfaction Eorcenwold, with one sweep of his enhanced ’star, did not just take its head off but disintegrated it entirely.

  The other thieves’ fear was then blasted away as though by a wind from heaven. Like an enraged bull-baluchitherium, Klijjver hurled himself after his leader, outpaced him and led the charge. His massive armoured bulk broke upon the foe like a battering ram and, with super-maul and wonder-bhuj tossing them into the air on either side, the herd giant of the Boyles steamrollered his way through the enemy ranks. All followed in his terrible wake, fast filling the cleft that Klijjver cleaved.

  None could stand in their way. Nobody, nothing, whether man, beast, rawgr or the Dead, had expected an attack from the fire pit. And though these were professional thieves more accustomed to working by stealth than through head-on confrontation, the war cry of the small army marooned on the ziggurat had brought out the soldier in them all, and on through the legion of hell they hacked, slashed, bludgeoned and booted.

  Just as the voice of their leader had propelled them on towards the thick of the fighting, so the blunderbuss of Eorcenwold – now an automatic – cleared their way. Nor could Klijjver, tiny eyes ablaze, be stopped by those before him; his momentum kept carrying him on, fuelled by the bitterness of years of victimization and by the cheering of his comrades behind him. But he could still be pulled down from either side if enough enemy could pile onto him. It was upon those to his left that Eorcenwold, still running, loosed the devastating cannonfire of his dragontooth musket. No less than a dozen of the Dead were hurled back instantly, their long-dead flesh disintegrating as they went.

  And upon those to the right Cerddu-Sungnir loosed a volley of quarrels from his five-shot. Not content with one body each, the spiralling quarrels tore through the shattering frames of those they entered first and burst out their backs to continue their devastating flight through several more, stopping only after five or six, then exploding inside the last victim. He too did not stop, but leapt over the corpses as they fell, smashing the empty crossbow into splinters against the exploding head of a thurible-bearer and in the same instant swept out his two-handed, diamond-glowing axe and went to work.

  Behind these three the rest of the Tyvenborg company charged. Flekki’s most lethal chakrams spun into selected wire-face necks; Hlessi’s last two throwing axes clove the heads of two more; Khurghan’s haladie of returning wove its spell of decapitation among the Dead. And though Finwald, his visage scab-red with exasperation, ran along with them crying, ‘Go to Bolldhe! Forget the others!’ they were having none of it. A spearhead that lanced into Scathur’s army from the rear, they leapt over the fallen and falling, reaching ever for new missiles or different weapons as they ran, and with eldritch enchantment and sheer brutality struck down all that stood in their path.

  It may have been the mage’s theurgy that had driven them to this place but it was to the Peladane’s standard that they now rallied. The stale ale of earlier days now flowed through the veins of those taproom slobs, like fiery red wine of the finest and most lauded vintage. Thieves no longer, they fought magnificently.

  Most of them, at any rate. For in some the flame burnt paler and even now they sought refuge in the chimney. When Eorcenwold had led his men out both Brecca and Raedgifu had stayed absolutely put. Raedgifu had simply stood there, transfixed at what was happening around him, but the diminutive Brecca had not dallied for a second; he knew only too well the limitations of his body, especially his legs, and had instantly scampered up the flue.

  There was a small hollow there, little more than an indentation in the irregular stonework, a place in the corner where someone small and nimble might hold himself with arms and legs braced against the walls of the shaft, and hopefully not be seen. The stunted locksmith, ever alert for escape routes, had noted it on his way down, when they had first arrived in the Maw, and without hesitation he now hauled himself up to it.

  The first Raedgifu knew of this was when he heard the clatter of iron-banded wood behind him. Brecca had dumped his two shields, too large and cumbersome for such fly-climbing, and was even now scrambling to get in the right position.

  Though he could not see the Stone-Hauger, could in fact see hardly anything in the near-darkness, the mere thought of there being still some way of getting even a few feet away from this scene caused hope to flare in Raedgifu’s desperate brain. At once he was himself again, leaping and scrabbling about in the flue in an effort to follow this same route to sanctuary . . . and seconds later his hand happened to land upon a booted foot.

  Brecca’s mind seized up with terror, for at first he thought it was one of the Dead, and he kicked out at the cold hand that grasped him.

  ‘Come ’ere, you,’ came a hate-filled hiss from Raedgifu in the darkness below.

  But Brecca was beyond any consideration for his fellow thief. Squeezing his shoulder blades into the stonework to brace himself, he reached down to the lanyard of his adze, yanked it from its belt-hoop and hacked down at the offending hand with an animal grunt.

  Raedgifu cried out in agony and fell back into the pit, only to land noisily upon Brecca’s discarded shields. Instantly a hundred slitted red eyes swung round to focus on him, and he realized the game was up.

  In an instant Raedgifu was off after his fast-disappearing mates, his pole-flail whirring before him, but it was hope without hope. Black claws reached for him from every side, snatched at him, became enmeshed in his fine baggy silks, then ripped, tore and twisted until his clothes were pulled off him in tatters. Still lunging on and lashing with his howling electric pole-flail, he endeavoured to force his way through the sea of dead flesh towards the island-like ziggurat looming ahead, like a bad swimmer in shark-infested waters reaching out imploringly for the shore.

  Then a silent scream wrenched his jaws wide as broken teeth clamped vice-like around his privates and wrenched. In seconds he was dragged under, and the seething grey waters of death closed over him.

  Even Klijjver’s momentum began to slow, his advance beset now by no less than four of the Dead. They clung on and scrabbled at his iron carapace, trying feverishly to get at the living meat inside. On either side of him now the morningstar of Eorcenwold and the axe of Cerddu-Sungnir still crushed and hewed, but those behind them no longer enjoyed the luxury of space in which to manoeuvre. Using their boots to kick up and fracture pelvises, their fists to punch clean through shattered sternums, their foreheads to cave in splintering skulls, they were nevertheless increasingly crushed in on themselves.

  It was all coming to an end – for some sooner than others. Hlessi gave a snarl of fear as he found himself entangled in a net, just such as he himself carried. Though the three spiked balls of his flail continued to pulp heads like rotten tubers, the mesh bit deeper into his blue-black skin and he was finally hauled from the wedge of thieves into the reaching arms of the horde. He stood no chance: within seconds his acid-green hair was dyed red with the blood belching from his mouth, while his body was pin-cushioned by the rusty little knives of the children.

  Into this, their darkest hour, Scathur himself now arrived. The tide of his army had sw
ept him far back, surging against him as the Peladane hurled them down from the ziggurat. Now a fury such as he had not felt for five hundred years boiled as a white light from the fissures that latticed his hide, lighting up the chamber in a furnace-like glare. His eyes had become featureless globes of weeping blackness, his white robes rippling and snapping as if blasted by an arctic wind, and the screeching from the soul-faces in his habergeon scales swelled in a rhapsody of torture, like the pipes of the organ of the underworld.

  The dragon roar that shuddered from those peeled-back lips caused the floor to quake and the marble to crack as he came on, tearing through the flesh of his own army to get at his foe. Those great hands of his closed over the heads of Dead and wire-face alike, plucked them from the throng and flung them, necks broken and heads ablaze with rawgr-fire, out of his path. And when still that was not enough to clear a path, he hefted his enormous bardische doubled-handed and swept it before him, side to side, in an unstoppable crescent that severed bodies at each stroke. Scathur did not stop until he reared up at last before the first of his adversaries.

  ‘Oh . . .’ was all Eorcenwold could manage as his hair shrivelled in the heat that rose up before him (and, oddly, behind him too).

  Scathur lifted the bardische high above his head and ululated.

  But the stroke never fell. For, out of all the thieves, it was Grini that came to their leader’s salvation. All hair and teeth, the screaming little Boggart sprang from the midst of the Tyvenborgers and with lightning speed raked his steely claws across the rawgr captain’s face, before rebounding off his chest and landing back amid the thief-pack again.

  It was a vicious swipe that might have ripped the face off any normal man. In Scathur’s case, though, it did little more than score the outer crust of his hide. But at least it had put him off his stroke.

  Ha! Might as well have a go too, thought Cerddu-Sungnir. If I’m going to die, I can at least go down knowing I’ve had a pop at that big bastard.