A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  A second later the red-rimmed eyes of the Half-Grell stared up through his face-shield to meet those of the rawgr.

  ‘Preying Mortis!’ he roared and plunged the manople blade from his wrist straight into Scathur’s left eye.

  Scathur grunted in surprise, faltering again, and with a laugh Cerddu-Sungnir continued on after Klijjver.

  Flekki too did her bit, driving her pata into the ankle beneath Scathur’s habergeon as she passed, before pouncing after the Half-Grell. She was immediately followed by Finwald, who held up a palm, muttered something and sent a shaft of blue light directly into the empty eye socket that the manople had excavated.

  Squealing like a hundred pigs on fire, Scathur doubled over in pain, thick greasy smoke pouring from every orifice in his head, and dropped his bardische.

  Grinning widely, Finwald ran on, crying, ‘To Bolldhe! To Bolldhe!’

  The tomes were strong within the mage, and his aura was sufficient to keep both wire-face and Dead at bay. In a surge that propelled them up the lower tiers of the ziggurat, it was beginning to look as if the Tyvenborgers might make it after all.

  ‘Keep close to the priest!’ Mauglad shouted from the thief he was inhabiting, ‘Go to Bolldhe!’ For he was every bit as desperate to get to Flametongue as Finwald was.

  Collapsed on his knees in a wide circle of empty floor, Scathur raised his smoking head. Through his remaining eye he watched in disbelief as the ragged troop of impudent little rogues passed him by without even sparing him a glance, indeed as though he were nothing more than a beggar in the gutter.

  (‘Your musket!’ came the voice of Eorcenwold’s sister from somewhere.)

  Except for one. Scathur blinked and saw that one of the vagabonds yet remained. This squat and unremarkable man before him appeared to be proffering him something. A gift, perhaps? A token of fealty? While his missing eye was in the process of regenerating itself, he was momentarily befuddled and could not grasp what was happening at all.

  (‘It’s going t’ blow!’ came the same voice again.)

  ‘Hold this a minute, will you,’ the man said, handing a pipe-thing to Scathur. Then he promptly fled to the ziggurat.

  Scathur did not know who Aelldryc was. He was not aware that she wore a flask of sticky green liquid on her belt either. And he had not the slightest clue what ‘coolant’ was.

  The ensuing explosion came as a bit of a surprise to him too.

  In a rapidly expanding circle, they fell. Those furthest away merely tumbled; those closer were knocked off their feet; the ones nearest to Scathur – and there were many – simply flew apart under the force of the residual energy that had been building up in the chamber of Eorcenwold’s blunderbuss.

  For those spared the worst of the blast, the sound of it was as a white light that exploded inside their heads. In the dazed hush of deafness, shock and nausea that ensued, the defenders picked themselves up and stared about.

  Radiating out from Scathur himself, all the thurible smoke had been blasted away, as had many of the thurible-bearers. The marble floor within this circle was scattered with bodies and body parts, some deathly still, some twitching. Many of the Dead had been sheared in half by the explosion but, moaning eerily in the sudden quiet, their top halves continued clawing their way towards the ziggurat.

  Others too were stirring to life, and once more began to advance upon their prey. With dismay, the company saw that Scathur was among these, though on his knees now and appearing barely able to move. That long tombstone face of his was horrendously scarred, smoke-blackened, and grotesquely rearranged. Even the myriad faces within his armour scales wore a look of stunned surprise. His cloak was now no more than a few threads clinging to his brooch, yet for the most part the rawgr captain still appeared to be in one piece.

  And he still had his legions, though greatly depleted, so the battle was far from over. But more significantly there was a curious warping in the air that told Scathur reinforcements of a very particular kind were on the way. For, like the Nahovian who writhed in horror atop the ziggurat, he could sense the approach of his Children. And when they arrived, it would all be over. All of it.

  But for now he waved a hand and, with a hacking snarl, sent forth his response.

  A score or so of fleet-footed Dead pushed their way through the throng, coming for the enemy with a vengeance. There was something in the way they moved that caused their human foe to stare at each other worriedly, something purposeful, something ‘wrong’. Flekki reached for her chakram pouch and sent one spinning from her hand towards the nearest attacker. It hit the creature directly in its bloated wobbling stomach, and instantly the Dead thing erupted in a loud moist burst of flying meat and bone-shrapnel.

  Though nowhere near as devastating as the blunderbuss, this explosion nevertheless bowled over those nearest to it and caused everyone else to flinch away in shock. As a pall of creosote-scented smoke descended in purple wisps, Nibulus looked up. ‘You have got to be joking . . .’ he breathed. An instant later he was back on his feet, and as he once again ripped the bow from his back, he cried out, ‘Bring those things down, NOW!’

  No further order was necessary. Everyone knew they had but seconds in which to save themselves. Those who had missiles used them. Those who did not pulled back. Three more Dead were detonated at a safe distance, but still the others approached with alarming swiftness, even though stuck with chakrams, arrows or Vetter darts. Englarielle’s spike-balled bola wrapped itself around the legs of a fourth, bringing it crashing to the floor so that, though still primed, it was mercifully immobilized.

  But some others were bound to get through, and the next moment the first of them lurched awkwardly into the recoiling ranks of huddled Vetters.

  Exploding Dead. Exploding Vetters. Screams rising afresh. Bodies opened like crimson flowers unfolding to a riotous sun. Roars of jubilation from the army that came behind. Heroes hurling themselves down the steps, tackling the oil-glutted Dead to the ground ere they could reach their fellows, sacrificing themselves without a second thought.

  Both ways the exploding Dead now flew, for their foes were strong and desperate. Hwald, Finan, Klijjver and Nibulus, together these four hurled this new menace right back down where they came from, to explode in the midst of their own ranks.

  It was amid this barrage of fleshy eruptions that Nibulus now fought his final battle. He was no longer in Vaagenfjord Maw but fought now beneath the blazing skies of his earlier years, upon that desert sand that thirsted so for men’s blood, even though this red and glistening marble floor was too sated by centuries of atrocity to drink his offerings. All the clamour, the bells, the smoke, the blood and the hatred now faded within the Peladane’s mind, and in their stead came to the soul of Nibulus Wintus the pipes of Pendonium, the earth-trembling pounding of war drums and the deep-throated chorus of the knights of Pel-Adan. It seemed to him that the spirits of those who had fought in this very place those long ages past stirred again from their sleep to gaze upon their comrade, the heir of Wintus, and to sing for him, their beloved son. And his soul soared higher at that moment than it ever had before, or ever would again.

  The thresher now abandoned, Nibulus hefted his Greatsword for one last time and launched himself into the thick of the enemy. Something pre-Peladane, primeval, burnt inside his breast, and he knew that he would fight on till death took him. Because there was something in the blood of his people, those countless generations who had lived, fought and died for centuries long before they had worshipped Pel-Adan, that made hope unimportant and victory irrelevant. And even when they knew they were about to die, they would continue fighting regardless, to the last.

  He cared not to which gods he now offered this sacrifice, for fighting had become everything. All piety, rank and arrogance had fallen away from Nibulus, and he finally understood what it was to be a warrior – to love not the Greatsword, the shining Tengriite or the victory, but to love those you fight for, though your death may never be known to them, and no
hymn ever sung in your honour.

  Paulus understood it too. Finally, here at the end, he understood.

  He had stopped rocking back and forth. His strength, his tears, even his madness, all were spent. He was spent. All that was left to him now was to choke out great rasping sobs and stare at the hell below him through a single eye red with weeping. Weeping like the infant he had once been, all those years ago, left alone in the cold cabin in the forests of Vregh-Nahov to bawl himself dry, staring helplessly up at the loathsome invertebrates that would crawl around on the ceiling, or drop down upon his face to burrow, and to feed.

  Here too he was once again utterly alone. Once again utterly ignored by his people, ignored by all except those that would feed upon him. Those comrades nearby might brush past him, leap over him, but none of the defenders, be they Eorcenwold’s, Englarielle’s or even his own company, would look at him. For he was no longer of any concern to the living. Just as it had been in his homeland long ago. For there, if one was dying of some illness, though one might still consort with one’s own people, eat with them, talk to them, nevertheless one would be considered already dead and ignored accordingly, just as with any other bothersome ghost.

  Words re-echoed in Paulus’s mind, the words of Nibulus when they had stood at the gates of the Maw: ‘Fear, if terrible enough, can turn the soul inside out and rob anyone of their true self . . . there is no character left within the terrified man . . .’

  It was so true. All it took was one look to see that Paulus was already dead, the spirit within him flown. How could he just lie there and weep? How could he thus betray them? Had he not striven so hard to break through the constraints of his brutal Nahovian culture, to rise above that inhuman darkness and nurture his own fate?

  More words came back to him, spoken just after Finwald’s treachery, this time those of Bolldhe as well as the Peladane’s.

  ‘Only the soul-dead would betray their friends.’

  No. “Only the dead are beyond betraying their friends . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Paulus stammered aloud between his sobs. ‘And I’m so truly dead.’

  He looked upon Wintus, saw the way he fought, knew the things he thought. And he understood. He understood what was surging through the man’s soul, that love that was driving both body and mind so much further than should be humanly possible.

  Not only Wintus, but the others also: Hwald and Finan, their manes frothy with saliva, the veins on their necks swollen, walrus-bellowing loud enough to crack the marble floor; seven races of thieves, from lowly Boggart to mighty Tusse, yet not a difference between them, but acting as one unit, watching out for each other’s backs; Gapp, Shlepp and Englarielle fighting side by side to their very last breath; Cervulice hacked down yet shielding Vetters with their flesh even as they fell, for, though mortally wounded, they fought on.

  Not even the old priest would pause for breath: his wiry, stick-like frame braced like frozen hawthorn against an arctic gale, he fought on like one from a saga, his tulwar lancing ungraciously but surely into the body of any that came near him.

  Something in the way they fought, something in the way they died . . .

  Paulus’s tormented soul became still then, and through his one eye he saw – really saw, for the first time – their beauty. Such beauty that, had he any tears left to give, he would have wept anew.

  They despised him, he knew. Though they had thought their hilarious little jest a secret, he knew – had always known – that they called him ‘Flatulus’ behind his back. But that did not matter, for he had been all his life without partner, lover, family or friend. But here and now, as far as he was concerned, they were his friends.

  So it was that Paulus now raised himself to his feet, adjusted his cowl and smoothed out its feathers. Then his hand reached beneath his coat and closed around the knotted tubes of the Fyr-Draikke’s gall bladder still tied at his belt.

  ‘It’s all right, lads,’ he whispered. ‘I’m here now.’ And with that he vaulted into the fray.

  Nobody really saw what Paulus did next, and they would have understood little of it even if they had. All they knew was that the seemingly demented victim of the stained-glass demons was suddenly among them again, pushing his way through and spraying their enemy with the foulest, most offensive stench any of them had ever known. They had no idea where it came from, but there was death in that smell, the very essence of maggot-ridden corpse-meat, and with it an acrid mordancy that made the eyes sting and the teeth hurt.

  Down the steps this lunatic thrust his way and, all the while, from the rubbery bag under his arm he sent forth this corrosion in inky jets upon the skin of the enemy. Like ants in a frying pan the Dead instantly shrivelled, smoked and fell; as did the wire-faces, but with considerably more commotion.

  By the time he had emptied his bladder and shaken off the last drops, he had burnt a pathway clear through to Bolldhe. On his knees now and supporting himself with one bloody arm clenching the tier above him, Bolldhe did desperate battle. He was under attack from a grotesquely corpulent Dead man, whose folds of grey nodule-encrusted blubber made him look as if he was wearing the remains of some vast sea mammal found washed up on the strand – or at least the parts the gulls had avoided. Too large and clumsy to bring its hands to bear, this monster was nevertheless in danger of smothering Bolldhe.

  A ruinous side-kick from Paulus’s booted foot crushed the Dead thing’s head entirely. It swayed back and forth, then tumbled forward. Bolldhe wailed as he was crushed beneath the cold rubbery bulk of his adversary.

  ‘Bolldhe!’ Paulus yelled. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Mnmf!’ Bolldhe responded in obvious distress.

  Paulus had no time to pause. He could not haul the oleaginous leviathan from Bolldhe so decided in the heat of the moment that Bolldhe was probably safer exactly where he lay; he could still breathe, after a fashion, and was fairly well shielded from any further attack.

  ‘I’ll just take this for now,’ Paulus said, and prised his bastard sword from the fingers of Bolldhe’s right hand. Bolldhe just stared at him, eyes wide with incredulity and reproach, but he could say nothing and do even less.

  ‘Right,’ the Nahovian breathed to himself, looking around, ‘let’s show them some real fighting . . .’

  Paulus had always taken his martial career seriously and strove ever to improve himself in its execution. He did not consider this hubris, it was simply that he was contemptuous of sloppy workmanship. Whereas others with less professional pride might hack away like apprentice butchers, Paulus had always been the one to experiment with different methods of killing. When he had first started out there had been a certain gratification in the clean decap or two-man-impale, and for those of lesser calibre this might have remained sufficient. For Paulus, however, they were mere essays in the craft. To his mind, one simply could not beat the spinal wrench, the mouth-to-heart penetration, or the brain-fingerpunch. He was death on two legs, so they said, the dark one, the raven-glutter of the battlefield, and this reputation he felt honour-bound to live up to.

  Just how much of his mind – let alone his pride or conscientiousness – the stained-glass demons had left him, not even he knew as yet. But there was still undeniably a certain style that was uniquely Paulus as he went about his work now. For a time, as he thrust, swept, parried and countered, Paulus was his old self once more, and everything he had ever learnt in his long years as a swordsman he put into busy use. It was probably the last chance he would ever have.

  For every half-dozen or so that fell directly to his sword, at least one would receive extra coaching, free of charge, in a more hands-on approach: ‘Remember!’ he cried. ‘Focus on nothing, and see all,’ and promptly kicked both eyes out of a Dead man’s earholes.

  ‘Aim not at your opponent, but through him,’ as his fist burst out the back of another’s soggy head.

  ‘Breathe out when you release your stroke,’ to one wire-face, while ripping the spine and lungs right out of his back.
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  ‘And though you may be harried by many,’ he added as he snatched the still-pumping organ from a bell-ringer’s demolished ribcage, ‘always take heart.’

  ‘Here concludes the lesson. Now, you try the same on me.’

  His was a lesson in combat that was as astounding as it was sickening, but it was a lesson that went completely unnoticed by his comrades, so occupied were they with their own affairs. They would never know how savagely yet excellently he fought that day. Neither would they know what he was about to do nor why. For it was neither Dead nor Oghain that Paulus was really looking for. They were mere obstacles in his way. Bigger fish the Nahovian sought now, for those nightmare stained-glass visions still played before his eyes.

  As he had lain there quaking in madness atop the ziggurat his mind had been propelled into the fireplace, up the flue and out into the great Hall of Fire, Smaulka-Degernerth. There his travelling spirit had stared down at what lay below, something of which only he could have presentiment.

  The Children of the Keep. Approaching rapidly. Almost upon them.

  No one but he knew of their imminence so no one could ever know his true intentions at this moment. Neither would they ever know, nor even be able to comprehend, exactly how he managed to do what he did next.

  Suddenly vast wings swept over him and knocked him to his knees. The screech of dragonkind, the report of arrows, the seething of a metallic whirlwind . . . and the Wyvern team passed overhead. They turned for a second pass, and without hesitation Paulus seized his chance. He quickly sheathed his sword, launched himself through the air and landed full upon Ceawlin’s back as she sailed past for another strafe.

  A squawk of surprise. A grunt. The sudden scrabble of hands. And then Elfswith was falling into the sea of Dead.

  A stony bellow of triumph from the Majestic Head below them.

  ‘IDIOT!’ Kuthy yelled, but he did not hesitate either. Abandoning his bow and unsheathing his sword, he back-flipped off the Wyvern and followed his undersized friend into the seething melee.