A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  ‘There!’ he said with satisfaction. ‘As easy as pulling my own hands off.’ All there was left to do was rip its lower jaw off, and then it would be a threat to no one, therefore a target no longer.

  That done, Mauglad turned to leave, but then turned back on an afterthought. Gripping firmly, he snapped the narwhal horn off and flung it as far away as possible.

  ‘You can kiss goodbye to that too,’ he said and, with Khurghan’s blood and bone-shards still masking his face, stalked off to find Flametongue.

  But Mauglad had no need to conceal his identity any longer.

  Her mask of gore wiped away by six long fingers, the ghost-pale face of Dolen Catscaul peered about her. The first thing she saw was Brother Oswiu Garoticca, and she could see that he was up to something.

  From what she could make out between the chaos of leaping figures, he was busy grappling with what appeared to be some large sea mammal unaccountably washed up on the ziggurat. Something huge, grey and oleaginous, at any rate. Though his back was turned to her, it was him for sure. She could see the three runes – Torch, Erce and Death’s Head – glowing upon his cloak.

  Whether this hitherto unmanifested sartorial phenomenon was caused by the censer flare, the chamber itself or some inner enchantment, Dolen did not know, but there was definitely something about the glowing runes that the Dead did not like. They swarmed around him, they swarmed past him, some even leapt over him, but none would interfere with him at his work.

  Yes, but what’s he doing?

  There was something beneath the grey mass of blubber which he was trying to get at. No, not something, someone. A man was trapped beneath the weight of an enormously rotund Dead man, and it appeared that he was doggedly fighting Oswiu off. Yes, there was Oswiu, knife in one hand, while with the other he was trying to snatch something the trapped man was grasping tight. A minor struggle that looked almost comical compared with the butchery going on around it, yet it seemed to Dolen that the eyes of all the heavens were focused upon it, as if it were the most important contest being waged at this moment in the entire world.

  Oswiu lunged again with the knife, but somehow the trapped man caught the wrist that held it, and guided it deep into the Dead man. Straight into that enormous gut it went, and Oswiu’s hand went with it, right up to the wrist. Then out came the hand again, minus the blade, and immediately the vast bulk deflated and sluiced out a nightmarish eructation of grey fluids and vapour.

  The heavens’ focusing crystallized further, till Dolen was sure she could even hear what the gods were saying to each other.

  Cuna’s rapidly dwindling confidence in Bolldhe was now at its lowest ebb. His teeth were gritted in despair, and the light from his red eyes glowed only dimly through the fingers of the hand he clasped over them.

  One of the Skela drifted up from behind and whispered in his ear, ‘So, my lord, if there were one wish we could grant you at this hour . . .’

  Cuna stared hard at the Syr, then wheeled away in despair. It was a despair that could not be compared in any measure to that felt by mankind, for it was almighty and immortal.

  And then, with an unexpectedness that surprised even himself, Cuna cried out to Oswiu in thunderous proclamation, ‘KILL BOLLDHE! KILL HIM NOW, AND DO IT YOURSELF!’

  Oswiu did not hear this. Not even Dolen heard it, though she did sense a definite stench of duplicity and betrayal in the ether. What she did hear, however, was the feeble voice of Bolldhe – that most abhorrent of voices, the murdering scum! – crying out in desperation.

  And what she also now sensed, her Dhracus brain screeching a warning in its every cell, was how the soul of Mauglad Yrkeshta currently inhabited the body of the not-yet-dead Oswiu Garoticca.

  Mauglad wavered a second and wondered if it really was worth trying to search through those undulating folds of dead fat for his Kh’is dagger. Then he reached a decision.

  To hell with it, I’ll use the mitre.

  Once again, as had happened back in Eotunlandt, Bolldhe found himself being assailed by the terrible Mitre of Smiting, and again, by some incredible stroke of luck more than by skill, he managed to catch the descending weapon by the haft. Nevertheless, as he and the Oswiu-thing grappled furiously, both clutching the awful skin-searing implement, he realized it must be seconds only before once again his face felt its kiss. And this time it would boil his entire head.

  ‘GO ON, MAUGLAD!’ Cuna cried. ‘WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?’

  Yes, what are you waiting for? Dolen wondered. Just kill the bastard!

  The face of her dead swain Eggledawc, whom Bolldhe had murdered, swam into the void between her and the two men who fought. Red tears began welling in her eyes, and her brain steamed madly. Yet she found herself giggling all of a sudden, for Eorcenwold’s Brother Number One looked so ridiculous now, a man alive only because of an ill-fitting soul that possessed him, blood flowing now only feebly from the reopened arrow wound in his back, and all the while trying to belt the hell out of the single arm that protruded from beneath the mountain of grey blubber on the step – like a man trying to club a seal out on the ice.

  The floating face of her dead love faded to be replaced by that of Bolldhe. She had been unconscious when he had lifted her to safety on his horse’s back, but she had felt something of gratitude even in her state of senselessness, and with some surprise had learnt later how the stolid stranger had risked almost certain death to save her.

  Her soul now burnt with such inner conflict . . . but there was no time for such thoughts, for regrets, for love, hate, forgiveness or vengeance. No time even for decisions.

  With a howl that bowled back the Dead descending upon her, Dolen cried out, ‘But you killed my boyfriend!’

  (Eorcenwold, bounding up the steps for his last stand, glanced fleetingly down at her as he passed. There were many things he might have expected someone to say in their final moments, but that certainly was not one that sprang to his mind.)

  Bolldhe snarled with pain as a hefty boot pinned his sword arm to the floor. The square brutish face of the cleric-assassin filled his vision; stringy black hair drooped over pale wet skin whose every crease and fold had its own tale of cruelty to tell. Thick lips puckered in a smile of death below eyes so tiny yet yawning with blackness, eyes that hosted no soul.

  In the very last second before his head was bludgeoned into seething jelly, Bolldhe wondered who, in truth, he was staring at. Was this indeed Brother Number One or did he perceive some other entity lurking in the void behind those eyes? Or was this simply the face of death, that which all men see in the second before they wink out of existence?

  But the blow did not fall, nor did Bolldhe die just then. Instead, he saw the death-visage before him transform into a mask of bewilderment and pain. With a paroxysm that set the iron scales of his doublet a-jangle, Oswiu coughed a discharge of bloody maggots straight into Bolldhe’s face, then slowly turned to see who or what had punctured him so rudely.

  As the big man lurched sideways, he revealed to Bolldhe another pale face also helmed in black hair. It was Dolen Catscaul, and she had thrust her misericord deep into Oswiu’s heart.

  ‘Bitch!’ he snarled, and – far from dead – struck her with a back-handed swing of his mitre that knocked the teeth from her mouth and crumpled her to the floor. There was a stench of burning meat that Bolldhe instantly recognized, before Oswiu grabbed hold of him, heaved him out from under the corpulent corpse and, with one boot pinning him to the marble, raised the mitre with both hands high above his head.

  In that moment, with his rune-cloak unfurling behind him and his weapon held up to point towards the ziggurat’s apex, Oswiu resembled in every aspect the necromancer that dwelt within him, now offering up an unholy talisman in supplication to the Rawgr. But the Dhracus, though direly afflicted, had not perished, and the black potency of the mitre that had driven all strength from Bolldhe three weeks previously served only to unleash the full fury inside her brain.

  In an instant her power
went forth, hooked into the mind of another, and dragged him straight to her like a lined fish. The body of Oswiu would not be slain while he yet abided within him, not with the paltry injury she had inflicted upon it. She had need, therefore, of greater strength. So it was that, before he had the chance to bring that final blow to bear, the last words Oswiu/ Mauglad would hear were the two that Dolen now purred to him ominously.

  ‘Meet Klijjver.’

  An instant later the borrowed thief’s head simply vanished, crushed into a spray of red vapour and flying maggots as Klijjver brought his massive maul down again and again and again. In a fit of psionically agitated madness, the huge Tusse continued to rain down blows even after the thief’s neck had been rammed deep into his ribcage.

  Thus, Brother Oswiu Garoticca, Mauglad-possessed and Meat-Kloven cleric-assassin of the Order of Cardinal Saloth Alchwych, was finally allowed to die, his body still kicking and spasming upon the steps long after his soul had fled.

  Both of them.

  Klijjver looked distinctly puzzled. He was not sure why he had just milled the top half of Eorcenwold’s brother into something resembling damson mulch – it was, after all, not the kind of thing he made a habit of – but he hoped there was a good reason for it. With a slight shake of his tiny head, he turned and headed up the ziggurat to join his leader for the last stand and sincerely hoped Eorcenwold had not seen what he had just done.

  Dolen was left behind. She dragged herself over to where Bolldhe lay, avoiding Oswiu’s nether half as it cavorted still upon the steps. Amid the charred and popping wreckage of her once-fair face shone now a smile of such unblemished clarity and beneficence that it was plain to anyone of sound mental state that her deed had finally purified her soul. Freed of the invasive loathing that had sullied her spirit for so long, she was returned to the wholeness of being that was her very essence. She looked down upon Bolldhe as he languished in stupefaction and, with red tears streaking her face, offered him her hand.

  But Bolldhe was not now of sound mental state. All he saw above him was another murderous Tyvenborger whose face had been transfigured into a ghastly echo of the chaos-spawn that rampaged all around. For the scorched and stinking skin was beginning to melt from her cheekbones, and fresh blood oozed from her coal-black eyes. She was like some monstrous apparition from his darkest nightmares.

  As if that were not dire enough, a new presage of hell now entered the chamber. This was in strict accordance with the equipoise at the centre of Oswiu’s cult: if one as evil as Mauglad should depart, another equivalent of evil should enter. Thus the Children of the Keep had finally entered Lubang-Nagar and would be upon them in a matter of minutes.

  ‘Bolldhe!’ came the desperate whine of Appa from somewhere above. ‘You’ve got to do it now!’

  As Bolldhe recoiled from the twitching female hand that reached out for him, his own hand fell upon the hilt of Flametongue.

  ‘Got . . . to do it . . . now . . .’ he repeated, then swept up the flamberge and, with a savage grunt, thrust it straight up through Dolen’s jaw and into her skull.

  Her body became instantly as rigid as her smile, then trembled as softly as a butterfly pierced through with a pin. Thoughts of her beloved Eggledawc flashed through her mind one last time, then she went limp and sagged upon the spike that had impaled her. As her body slackened, so too did the smile, allowing the blood to well forth from a heart that was utterly, utterly broken.

  Bolldhe’s mind began to regain some measure of rationality. He lurched to his feet and stared down at the Dhracus pinioned on the end of his blade. He still did not know what she had been up to just then but, whatever it was, he guessed he had probably overreacted again.

  Yet he had no time to be sorry, for the last of the Cervulice were stampeding up the great steps behind him, and the Dead and the wire-faces came shrieking after them. It was time to go up. Up to the top. Time to ‘do it now’. Bolldhe braced his boot firmly against the Dhracus’s jaw and yanked the sword from her skull. He delayed not even long enough to see her lifeless corpse slump to the floor, but turned and heaved himself up on to the next tier.

  Just before he reached the top, he turned and looked back. There below him lay a scene that no amount of rational thought could take in. Throughout the battle all who fought had become progressively redder and redder, drenched with the blood of their foes, their comrades and even themselves, till it was difficult to tell who was who, what was what, and who still had any flesh left on them to bleed from. In the end, it seemed, they had all become one and the same, a single entity of sharp tooth and raw meat, one that was inexorably eating itself to total destruction.

  Then, at that very same moment, the engram in Bolldhe’s mind flared up and melted the ice wall – and, at last, he remembered.

  SIXTEEN

  Bolldhe the Great

  DARKNESS. SILENCE. It is cold here and smells of swamp-mist. Nothing moves, nothing stirs. There is only deadness.

  Eventually, after a time that cannot be gauged by the living, there comes the faintest of sounds: a soft night wind stirs unseen boughs; a skritche-owl cries far away. Then the stealthy chink of chainmail, barely heard, far, far away. It gets louder. With it, the muted sound of footsteps, some heavy-booted and confident, others light and less sure, softly crunching the ice that patches the frozen mud on the rutted path.

  The pale glow in the east deepens; a red sun breaks over the Rampart Mountains, slants across hillock and field, spreads a ruby-sprinkled gauze over dew-blanketed grass as dawn’s sanguine light trickles into a world unwilling to awake.

  Voices in the mist, furtive, conspiratorial. But no birds herald this new day. The air is tainted by the reek of rain-doused embers and of newly spilt blood.

  Shadows materialize from the mist, a dozen or more, some large, some small. Over the broken-down gate of the croft they step, snag their cloaks upon the thistles, pick their way over the carcasses that lie contorted and steaming in the early morning chill. Some of the fallen are animals, others humans.

  They stand there: the boys rigid, uncomprehending, speechless, the men chafing their arms and stamping their feet. The leader steps forward, impatient, irritable, and hacks phlegm onto the mud by the nearest corpse. He would rather be in bed with his doxy but has work to do here first.

  He jabs a finger into the nearest boy’s temple. ‘You. Fetch embers, wood. Get a fire going.’ Another he motions into the croft, charged with bringing pots. A third he sends to get water.

  He then turns towards the rising sun, and his scarred face glows afire. It is a hard cruel face, but also, on this bitter morning, a bored face. The boys go about their tasks wordlessly, some in haste, some reluctantly, but all in a daze. It is the first time they have beheld a scene of murder. It is the first lesson of a long, long day.

  One boy does not move. Will not move. He stares down at the corpses, axe-cloven and manure-smeared, and they stare back.

  The sergeant sees him and yells, ‘You! Bladder!’

  ‘Bolldhe, sir,’ the boy corrects him.

  ‘Baldazar, then,’ the sergeant amends. ‘What by zounds d’you think you’re doing? This isn’t a pissin’ leave-day!’

  ‘They’re my cousins, sir,’ the boy states.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My cousins. You’ve killed my cousins.’

  The sergeant hesitates a moment, then snorts. ‘As far as you’re concerned, boy, they’re just the enemy. Now the sooner you can cut ’em up and cook ’em, the sooner we can get some breakfast.’

  I was eight years old, Bolldhe murmured to himself upon the steps of the ziggurat. Just eight. And that’s what they did to me. To all of us. Those crofters hadn’t even done anything . . .

  Brutalize them. Inure them. Make them do whatever they are ordered to.

  And it worked. For a while at least we wanted to eat our enemies, consume them utterly and shit them out into the latrine. That’s the way they do it, those Peladanes, always engineering people’s minds . . .
r />   That was why he hated them so.

  But then that was why all the boys hated them. What made Bolldhe so different?

  His vision focused. That . . . that breakfast at the croft was not, however, the scene he had looked upon in the ice cave of his soul-journey. Even that atrocity, he realized with mounting horror, was not the core of his engram; it was merely lurking on the periphery. For, looking now upon the abattoir that the chamber had become, he knew that that which lay dormant in his memory, that childhood horror that had burnt itself onto his brain then sealed itself off, was so much worse. And it was down into this seething core of suppressed memory, this dream beneath the dream, he must now go.

  Weeks later the same company of soldierlings had been taken out into the field and set against a gang of marauding picaroons that had holed up in the sea caves of the northern straits. It was all a set-up, of course. While the Peladanes waited at the escape tunnel, the boys were ordered straight through the front door: lambs to the slaughter, a mere distraction while the Thegne sent his men in the back way to do the real job.

  It was a good enough plan, and by the time the Peladanes reached the scene their greed-bright eyes were gleaming. The picaroons lay dead, together with the boys, either sprawled across the rocks or floating off in frothing circles of red spume. And the bounty glittered in barrels and chests all about. But, as so often happens in ‘war’, things did not go quite as planned. Too late the Peladanes realized that one boy had survived, one furtive little waif who flitted as a pale ghost through the dark recesses of the cave, one whose sight had had that much more time than theirs to adjust to the darkness. And one by one they fell, those proud and shining warriors. They fell to the sly little blade that struck out from the darkness, pierced from behind, and coughed blood and spittle, and shat in their breeches.