A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  Paulus was well aware how it must appear to the others: his grabbing of the sword from a stricken Bolldhe, then abandoning him, his hijacking the Wyvern after ejecting her riders, then forcing her at knife-point to take him out of the chamber at full speed, deserting the battle. But there was no other way. The task at hand took everything he had, all his quickness, skill and ruthlessness, and the task ahead would doubtless require even more. There was room now for neither doubt nor vacillation.

  Though she twisted and writhed, bucked and heaved, there was no dislodging the Nahovian. He clung on like a tick, one hand clenched hard into her windpipe, his other arm wrapped around her neck, which was now glowing with fury. At one point she even turned totally upside down. But, anticipating this, Paulus held on with both arms and dangled in mid-air, the heels of his boots cracking Dead heads as they passed over.

  Then came the angry creature’s stinger, as it inevitably had to. But this too was anticipated, and Paulus moved quicker. As he felt her back muscles tense, with only one arm around the Wyvern’s neck he reached out with his other, just in time to catch her tail as it lanced towards him, and grabbed it mere inches below the lethal poison sac.

  He wasted not a second in twisting it so hard he could feel the sacrum vertebra pop. Ceawlin let out a distinctly un-Wyvern-like roar that sounded more like a stallion at stud, and her tail whipped away, the sac now dangling limp as a broken flowerhead. A second later Paulus had his punch-dagger out and pressed sharply against her neck.

  ‘You’ll not try that again, bitch!’ Paulus hissed. ‘Or anything else, for that matter!’

  The clinging mercenary had the distinct impression he could sense her feelings and thoughts. At this close range there certainly did seem to be strong resonances emanating from the beast. And what he could sense from her now was yielding. Hatred and frustration still, also, but mainly yielding.

  As they circled through the air above the battle, Paulus remembered the empathy with which Elfswith and Ceawlin seemingly communicated. Concentrating as strongly as he could, he sent a clear message lancet-sharp into her brain: That hole over there! Take me. NOW!

  It seemed to do the trick. Strangely acquiescent now, Ceawlin did as she was bid. There was no mistaking her fury at being taken away from her beleaguered friends, but neither was there any mistaking the extremely sharp blade currently pressed against her carotid artery.

  So, tail straight out behind her, secondary eyelids closed against the wind and violet spittle streaming back along her neck, Ceawlin sped as fast as an arrow towards the fireplace. A chorus of howls and an unfolding forest of lunging arms arose from the Dead army as she dived. Paulus braced himself and closed his eyes tight, for the terror in him had returned and threatened to rip the soul out of him just as the air was torn from his lungs.

  Then they were through. Hardly slowing a wingbeat, Ceawlin changed direction in mid-air and shot straight up the flue. There was a cry behind as Brecca was knocked off his hidden perch to tumble down into the fireplace below, but Paulus hardly registered it. He was clinging on for all his life, his heels smacking against the stonework as they streaked upwards.

  What happened next felt like nothing he had ever experienced before, save perhaps during his soul-journey only minutes earlier. It seemed to him that his ascent through darkness suddenly veered off through spiralling planes of nausea, until he and the Wyvern hurtled on along the level. Hurtled on towards a mouth of fire.

  Closer it came, that incandescent rectangle of light, approaching so fast he had not even enough time to steel himself.

  Then, with a gasp of hot air that seared the very skin of his windpipe, both raptor and captor shot out of the tunnel and into the open once more.

  Oh, to be back in Smaulka-Degernerth again! Back in the Hall of Fire. How he had missed its suffocating air, the blinding glare of its magma flare. High above the river of lava he soared, so high, so close to the cavern’s roof that the brass studs of his cape struck sparks against the blackened rock as the Wyvern rushed past it.

  Then Ceawlin brought herself to a halt with a great billowing of her wings and hovered there in the sulphurous air. Still beating those enormous wings, she craned her neck back to fix her eyes upon her abductor, who was still somehow managing to hold the punch-dagger to her artery. And in her slitted eyes there appeared to burn the question: Well? What now?

  But Paulus did not return her gaze. Through streaming eyes he was looking down upon this vision of hell below him, down to the source of that infernal heat that formed the very essence of this place. For, as soon as he had emerged into the cavern, that sense of a dread presence had once more overwhelmed him – and now, finally, he saw them.

  Monsters, pure evil, rawgrs in the shape of children, emerging from the river of fire to claw their way up the rock face towards the flue. Though he had never seen them before, he had spent long enough trapped in the rawgr-dimension to recognize their kind. Their name, spoken by the esquire but a short time ago, filled his mind: the Children of the Keep.

  Even from this distance they sensed him, and the malignity of their raised stare struck him with such potency that he almost toppled from his mount. As it was, Paulus faltered, and the punch-dagger slipped from his hand and fell, glistening with ruby brightness, down towards the lava.

  That was all Ceawlin needed. If Wyverns could, she would have smirked. Without waiting to find out what her hijacker wanted of her, she turned tail and shot back to the tunnel. She folded her wings back to disappear down the hole again, but this time flew as close to the lintel of the flue exit as she could, in an effort to scrape the irritating (but now no longer threatening) little tick from her back as she went.

  No need, for Paulus had already thrown himself from her and landed heavily upon the ledge. The wind was driven from him, and his head swam with the abysmal fumes he was compelled to inhale. But she had served her purpose, and he was happy enough to see her disappear back the way they had come, back to her friends, back to where she could be of more use.

  Now he forced himself to his feet and stood unsteadily by the tunnel mouth. Turning back, he stared in fear at the lip of the drop over which, very soon now, the Children would haul themselves.

  He had summoned them, the overseer of their brood. By the shortest route they came, for neither moat of magma nor rampart of rock could hinder them. Soon they would rejoin their captain, screaming down the flue in a tempest of fire. And when that happened, it would be all over. All of it.

  The only thing that now stood in their way was Paulus Flatulus. It was for this that he had come. Alone. Just as it had always been for him. But it was only here and now that he finally knew just what it is to be truly, utterly alone.

  I’d never have got a decent tree-hanging, anyway, he thought with forced humour, recalling his words at the inn at Myst-Hakel, for what wild creature would be desperate enough to partake of my rotting flesh?

  Forced humour, indeed. For, if but one wish could have been granted him in this his last moment, Paulus in his breaking heart yearned so terribly that it might be this: that by some grace of the spirits of his Chlans, one, just one, of his people might witness his passing and the manner he had chosen for it. Then perhaps they might have said of him, ‘Surely here was one worthy of the greatest of tree-hangings.’

  A hideous scream echoed up from the abyss and slapped Paulus around the face with its impact. He had no time now for such thoughts, but neither did he have a plan! He drew his sword, stared into its glassy surface and saw his own terrified visage mirrored within.

  Who was he fooling! Against just one of those monsters below he would have little chance. He might be able to delay it for a minute or two, but against the horde that approached even he, the greatest swordsman of the Nahov, would not last more than a few seconds. And time was what his comrades needed, if Bolldhe was to do whatever it was he was supposed to.

  Paulus looked about desperately. What he was looking for he did not know and would not know until he foun
d it, but there was always something a warrior could do in the scant moments left to him before he was assailed, some kind of preparation which might tip the scales, no matter how meagrely. An alcove perhaps? Some small screen to jump out from? Or maybe – and this demonstrated just how desperate he was – he could bring the masonry down with his sword to block the tunnel?

  But looking about him for just three seconds was all it took to cause his heart to sink. Old this place was, for sure, but it would take an entire foundry of Jutul to make so much as a dent in this stonework . . .

  A second scream sounded. This time so much closer. Paulus’s knees began to give.

  Should I hide?

  Then his eyes fell upon an object sticking out of the wall.

  What is it? A torch-cresset? A sword hilt jammed into the stonework?

  Propelled forward by Fate, it seemed, Paulus came to the enigmatic little bar that protruded at an acute angle from the wall, and he stared at it.

  He knew nothing of the Testament of Khuc, but he needed to be neither a loremaster nor artisan of stone to realize what it was he was looking at: a lever, ‘the crafty mechanism that lowered these obstacles . . .’

  For a moment his heart ceased to beat and his vision blurred, as his mind took in the enormity of what he beheld.

  I’ve succeeded! Jubilation and despair vied for space in his overflowing soul. Oh, hell and damnation, I’ve succeeded . . .

  A third terrible scream reverberated through the air and the stone. The Children were now just below the lip; he had only seconds left to him. He reached out for the lever, his hand folded around it and he pulled . . .

  It moved! It was stiff and squealed with a noise like teeth scraping down a brick wall, but it did move. Paulus withdrew his hand and shuddered at the sound. Or the thought.

  Just testing, he said to himself, just testing . . .

  One quick tug, and it would give. The stone blocks set in motion five centuries ago would once again come down, sealing the passage.

  Sealing his own fate.

  A Child’s face, its features split by the blackness within it, appeared over the rim. Paulus’s hand shot back to the lever and grasped it determinedly.

  His gorge rose. He could not do it. Despite all he had done so far to bring him to just this end, he could not bring himself to seal himself in here with those . . .

  The sacrifice of his comrades came back to him: the selfless heroism of Englarielle’s folk, the heart-lifting sortie of the Tyvenborgers, but most of all the magnificence of the Peladane’s stand and what it had awoken in Paulus himself. Just as the pipes of Pendonium had sounded in Nibulus’s mind, so too did the gentle flutes of Vregh-Nahov now come to Paulus. That single pure note that could rise clear above the tramp of armies or the burning of villages, rise above all the evil of the world as a diamond tear coursing down through the filth on a smoke-grimed face. And underlying this note, words from the past, muffled yet mellifluous, were recited in elegiac intonation: ‘. . . heroes were only heroes for how they died, not how they lived. They could be the biggest shits in the seven counties, and yet if they died a hero’s death, the skalds would sing their praises for all eternity . . .’

  ‘But,’ Paulus breathed tremulously, ‘only if one’s death is witnessed.’

  More Ogginda-rawgr faces appeared, each one more unholy than the last, and hauled themselves over the lip . . .

  To wander among the moss-clad trees of his home in spring, breathe deep the fragrance of their immaculate blossom.

  RUN! FLEE! NO SONGS WILL BE SUNG IF NO ONE EVER KNOWS!

  His eyes crazed with fear, guts weighted as though by a boulder, his grip tightened till blood squeezed from the fingernails.

  But still he could not do it.

  Warmth and light in that cold misty cabin, a family to fill it, a meal to share, a drink with friends . . . One to say they would never leave him, but would, no matter what happened, bear him to safety when all was done.

  Warmth and light on his face, the infernal conflagration of the rawgrs as they sprinted for him, almost upon him now. His eyes filled with tears, his mind filled with a picture, a picture of his companions from Nordwas, they who had ever spurned him, they who would forever believe him a coward and deserter.

  Swallowing hard, he uttered his final words: ‘I’m the best friend you ever had . . .’ Then he wrenched the lever down hard.

  Blocks rumbled down, fiends screamed in jabbering vexation, and Odf Uglekort hefted his bastard sword for one final time.

  Bloodied and screaming, in pain, confusion and fear; thus we enter this world and thus we depart it.

  Ceawlin screamed her way back down the flue for all she was worth and Brecca cried out in terror again. He had just succeeded in scrambling back up to his alcove when the Wyvern came hurtling down and smote him from his perch a second time.

  As Brecca landed upon his clattering shields yet again, Ceawlin swept from the fireplace in a mad rush of unfurling wings, extending talons and steaming nostrils, and sped back to where Elfswith had fallen from her. Frantically the jewelled eyes of the Wyvern swept around as she flew, trying to pierce the dense writhing swarm of the enemy, trying to locate her friends. She knew exactly where Elfswith had tumbled off, but now she saw with horror there was nothing there but a tide of long-dead flesh, a heaving mass of grey pressing ever onward.

  A shrill cry shuddered from her throat, and her terrible claws resumed the destruction where they had left off.

  Something had happened above them all that brought about a change in the atmosphere. That earlier feeling of the approach of something inconceivably evil, that sense of imminent destruction, now eased off then ceased altogether. There had been a series of loud impacts from somewhere up the flue, a dull but immensely heavy pounding that had rocked the entire chamber, followed by a distant screeching of such thwarted fury that, though muffled to the point of near-inaudibility, it had caused all to momentarily falter.

  But then it had passed and, for a while at least, the air felt lighter and cleaner.

  A strangled bellowing erupted from the throat of Scathur as he stumbled and heaved his way through his army. His body had been marred greatly, but yet held together, and now that he sensed his Children were being forced to take the long way around, the will that drove him onward was refuelled by a rage that would not be staunched.

  That was my trick! How DARE they!

  He had been thwarted yet again, and this time moreover by his own mechanisms. But it mattered little, for in a moment he would reach the Peladane, and then he would have the flamberge. Even in this damaged state, nothing could stop him.

  So he came on, bits of flesh falling away from him with each lurching step. The bardische was now a crutch rather than a weapon.

  Finally he reached his quarry.

  ‘PELADANE!’ he roared, and loomed up to tower over the human warrior. Before Nibulus could do anything, one monstrous hand was clamped around his throat and squeezing so hard that his eyeballs almost popped out.

  ‘I’ve got you now, you squirmy little maggot!’ Scathur wheezed. ‘I’VE GOT YOU! Oh, how I shall . . .’

  He hesitated then, because his eyes had fallen upon the Greatsword that Nibulus had let fall from his fingers.

  ‘What’s that?!’

  Nibulus, realizing that the moment of his death had arrived, fixed the rawgr captain with a gaze heavily weighted with contempt. ‘It’s called a “sword”,’ he choked defiantly.

  ‘But it’s straight!’ Scathur protested.

  ‘Yes. It’s a novelty sword.’

  ‘It should be flame-shaped!’ Scathur howled.

  Then Nibulus grinned, despite his predicament. For only now did he realize how Finwald had been right about the flamberge all along. It clearly was some kind of significant weapon. With his last few seconds of life he therefore knew he must buy Bolldhe some extra time. He managed a shrug and replied, ‘Yes, I pointed that out to my armourer, but, well, what can you do?’

 
; The eyelids of the D’Archangel narrowed into little fleshy slits, and white-hot furnaces built up behind them. His groping fingers forced their way into the Peladane’s gagging mouth and were just about to do something truly awful when he was distracted. Something – someone – had just flown past him, as though catapulted from below, to land on a higher level.

  Was that the bard? Scathur wondered. Didn’t I just dismember him only a moment ago?

  That had always been Scathur’s problem: far too confident in his ability to destroy others through fear and torture. It was just this failing that was returned to him in full as Kuthy, coming up behind him, slipped his temple sword beneath Scathur’s habergeon and rammed the entire length of the blade right up his diabolic arse.

  Elfswith, clutching the treacly cavity in his shoulder where his arm used to be, lay sprawled upon one of the higher tiers where Kuthy had hurled him. He had landed with an awful crunch upon the step and immediately realized with dismay that he had broken the two hard-boiled eggs he’d been saving for later. Nevertheless, as he looked down and saw what Kuthy had just done, he managed a smile.

  Who would have thought that one of Kuthy’s nature would dive into a whirlpool of enemies to save a friend? Especially a friend whose arm had just been sliced off by Scathur and therefore appeared beyond any hope of salvation? Especially since, in the process, his strangely appendaged headgear, that which he never removed in public, had been wrenched off to display Kuthy’s awful secret beneath: the most appalling frizzy bush of bright ginger hair ever to have sprouted from the head of a human.

  Who, either, would have believed even the great Tivor capable of hurling their foe back repeatedly, grabbing Elfswith by the lapels, then running back to the ziggurat over the top of the Dead’s heads, like negotiating so many stepping stones? And still have the strength left to hurl his friend several yards further up to a safer position, then finally stick his sword up a rawgr’s bum?