A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  Bolldhe’s eyes came to rest finally upon the thieves huddled together at the stern. They looked cowed and thoroughly miserable. Eorcenwold’s haunted expression had not altered since Bolldhe had first encounterd him after the battle, and as for Klijjver, never before had Bolldhe seen anyone so big look so diminished. Caught in the withering glare of his leader, his gaze remained fixed on some point out to sea, as far away from the current enforced company as possible.

  Bolldhe shrugged and turned over on his side. Or at least he tried to, but seemed unable to move. What the . . .! For some reason his body was not responding to his wishes.

  He caught sight of Elfswith. The half-huldre looked a lot healthier than before and even now the pink stump of a new arm was beginning to bud into growth.

  ‘Oh aye, the dead are rising again,’ he heard a quavering voice croak nearby – the first he had heard so far – and he swivelled his eyes to see who had uttered this rather tasteless remark.

  At first he thought a stranger had joined them, possibly a barbarian herdsman or even a whaler, for he did not recognize the figure that sat up on the gunwale at his side. It was a big man, bent over with age or infirmity, and clad from head to toe in tattered red-stained rags and crude swaddling strips of animal hide. Then Bolldhe noticed that he also wore the shredded green remnants of an Ulleanh around his shoulders, and realized that this beaten-up old beggar from the wilds was in fact Nibulus, divested of his armour and bandaged all over with the torn-up remnants of his old bearskin cloak. The son of Artibulus now looked older than his father, and his voice was scarce more than a whisper.

  The two men regarded each other for a long moment, and saw their own feelings reflected in the eyes of the other. But there was something else besides all that memory of hurt, horror and death, something that parted the heavy drapes of grief just enough to let in a chink of light. It was something that almost amounted to pride, for they had won: they had triumphed over unbelievable odds and somehow emerged from the depths of hell alive. But, above all, the pair of them had fought like bastards! A grim smile touched both their lips.

  Somewhere off to one side Elfswith had begun to play. The bard had fished out a small dulcimer and, with tiny hammers of silver, struck out the same sweet tune he had played on his krummhorn just hours before they had entered the Chamber of Drauglir. Over this melody Nibulus began to chant, holding in his hands the Chronicle of Gwyllch. It was from this, the final entry in that revered tome, that he quoted:

  ‘So we sette sayl, and bothe heav’n and hel we bore with us inne oure harts. Short wode be the voyage, but long the march. Yet even this wode be as a tern’s dive next to that of our Blessed Fallen. Even now their blod we beheld, raining inne the skys to the west, to that far land where we were bounde. And in this we saw, for soothe: they had reach’d home ere we.

  Thus we griev’d no longer, but sang in voyces strong and true, oure prayse to Lord Pel-Adan, our psalm of blessing for the Everlasting Heroes, but most of alle, our song to ourselfs, to a brotherhod that will reign etyrnal.’

  Words came with difficulty to Bolldhe. His tongue was swollen, as thick and dry as an old leather glove, and he could hardly move his jaw. But he had to speak.

  ‘Sh-sure I know tha’ tune,’ he managed. ‘Elf’s tune. Erd i’ when I wza kid . . . long time ’go. Fun’ral dirge, uh?’

  Nibulus’s face darkened in renewed sadness on hearing the slur of Bolldhe’s speech, but he nodded. ‘ “The Pyre of Jubeigh III”, an old dirge from the west.’ And, before he could stop himself, added, ‘Why? Would you like it played at your own funeral?’

  This time Bolldhe had no trouble voicing his response, as articulate as it was cold. ‘No,’ he said. ‘At yours.’

  And with that he drifted off to sleep once again.

  A strange voyage indeed. Outside the real world. Beyond time. Dreamlike. That pale sun refusing to move an inch . . .

  Then, the next moment Bolldhe saw that it was twilight. The sun, its uppermost rim now only just visible above the pencil line of the lead-grey sea, had drifted far towards the north, like one of Gwyllch’s terns slanting into the waves at the shallowest incline possible. Suspended in time, it seemed reluctant to go those final few inches that would take it down into the cold and lightless world below.

  He must have slept for a long time. Gods, it was so hard staying awake! Waking this second time, his head felt woolly and insubstantial, and around him all was even quieter than before. The gentle lap of water, the steady rhythm of wooden creaking, a secret whispering of frosty air currents, and the occasional distant rumbling of fiery mountains far behind them; it was all so muffled, as if a heavy blanket were being drawn over the world.

  There were voices too, hushed and reluctant to be heard.

  ‘. . . already done all I can . . .’

  Some at least were talking now, though the words intruding on the stillness were not welcome. That sounded like Appa’s voice, but Bolldhe could not be sure; he had never heard the old man talk in such hollow tones, drained not only of the shrillness and irritability that Bolldhe had grown so used to, but also of any urgency.

  ‘We all have,’ came another voice, just as subdued and with a faint tinge of shame to it.

  Wodeman! That bastard, well might he be ashamed.

  ‘So many hurts, so little healing left,’ came the first voice again, ‘and me so very old – so exhausted. Dried up, like an old prune.’

  Definitely Appa.

  ‘But what actually happened to him?’ came a third voice, probably Wintus’s.

  Why not just ask me? Bolldhe thought, a little annoyed they were discussing him as if he were not there.

  ‘He finally learnt how to open himself to the truth,’ Wodeman replied, ‘to look into himself and discover the treasures therein.’

  ‘He finally realized the truth of Cuna’s message,’ Appa argued.

  ‘He finally accepted what I’ve been teaching him all along: reject the sword, or else reject life.’

  Nibulus snorted. ‘That’s not what I meant! In any case, neither of you knows what went on inside his head up there on the ziggurat. Only he can know that.’

  Bolldhe smirked. That Nibulus, of all of them, should get it right.

  ‘Does it really matter?’ Kuthy butted in. ‘The important thing is, Bolldhe succeeded and Finwald failed.’

  His voice was blunt but with more than a hint of ambiguity. Was he genuinely satisfied with the outcome, or disappointed?

  ‘Yes, he failed, thank Cuna,’ Appa breathed, and closed his eyes reverentially.

  ‘Thank Erce,’ Wodeman corrected him automatically.

  ‘Cuna,’ Appa quietly insisted.

  ‘Erce,’ Wodeman not-so-quietly reiterated.

  The two priests regarded each other contemplatively, then experienced the odd sensation that they were looking at each other not from opposite sides of a narrow boat, but across a great chasm wider than the ocean. Yet at the same time neither felt any need to back away from that precipice. There was a mutual feeling that, on this occasion at least, their gods were reconciled, if not exactly united. And if one god had backed down a step or two, perhaps it was best not to know which one.

  ‘No, what I meant was,’ the Peladane continued, ‘what happened to him, to his body? He looks as though he was trampled by a herd of baluchitheria.’

  ‘He was blown off his feet by an exploding sword and landed on his arse,’ Kuthy replied. ‘That’s what happened to him.’

  ‘Not the sword,’ Wodeman chipped in. ‘He got off lightly there. No, it was the rawgr captain that did that to him . . . Euch, did you see that thing? Just meat and slime, held together by hate and corruption. As damned as . . . Finwald.’

  ‘Him!’ Appa spat. ‘Too bright for his own good, that one. I wish I’d never converted him back in Qaladmir.’

  ‘Bet he thinks so too,’ Nibulus remarked sourly. ‘He’d be a lot better off than he is now – wherever he is.’

  A long silence ensued, ev
entually broken by Appa. ‘It was his own fault,’ he said gloomily. ‘Finwald never really . . . got it. For all his youth and zeal, his brains, his study – all that – it still didn’t sink in. None of it. He was a man of words, of learning—’

  ‘A cunnan,’ Wodeman interjected.

  ‘A cunnan, yes, but never a man of faith. Questioning, always questioning, yet so little real understanding. Cuna alone knows what books and librams he dug up, what histories he studied. He dug too deeply – far too deeply – and yet the only soil he found for his faith was nightsoil.’

  ‘He got lost in the woods,’ Wodeman agreed, recalling Oswiu and the wayward Torca Saloth Alchwych.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ Appa concurred. ‘Funny how people who stray from their religion always seem to end up with snake-bladed weapons.’

  The Peladane snorted. ‘What are you going on about?’

  ‘Finwald’s flamberge? Oswiu’s kh’is?’ Appa reminded him. ‘Remember?’

  Bolldhe’s mind instantly went back to Eotunlandt, and his eye ached again with the memory of the tip of the blade Oswiu had held against it.

  ‘He claimed the flamberge sucked souls,’ Nibulus recalled. ‘I thought he was just being dramatic, but—’

  ‘I wish I’d made the connection earlier,’ Kuthy cut in. ‘Things might have worked out rather differently if I had.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  There was a slight pause before Kuthy gave his reply, but did Bolldhe detect also a certain slyness in his voice? ‘That sort of thing,’ Kuthy explained, ‘is our business, our trade if you like. It’s what we do.’

  ‘And, believe me,’ Elfswith added with less delicacy, ‘if we’d known what it was Bolldhe was carrying around all that time, well . . . Who knows?’

  ‘We’d often discussed it,’ Kuthy took over, ‘this legendary relic from a time before even Drauglir came down into the world. We knew there was something special about it, knew it had more to tell than any of the legends recalled. It had so many different names, so many intriguing and mysterious titles, but – and this is the most irksome part – the one I’d forgotten right up until Bolldhe destroyed it was Soul Stealer.’

  ‘We often wondered what had become of it,’ Elfswith went on, ‘but neither of us guessed it had fallen into the hands of the Rawgr.’

  ‘So it was only when we saw Bolldhe destroy it—’

  ‘ – and what came out of it—’

  ‘ – that we realized it’d fallen into the hands of Bolldhe too. Ah well, such is life.’

  ‘Why?’ Appa demanded. ‘What would you have done with it?’

  Elfswith’s coat turned sable black but he held his silence. Kuthy, on the other hand, began to lose his caginess.

  ‘We certainly wouldn’t have been so quick to destroy it.’

  They noted the reproachful tone in his voice, and suddenly all eyes were upon him. The evening’s last light was behind Kuthy, and in the shadow of his face the company could just make out the two pale glints of ice that were his eyes.

  ‘To throw away such a fabulous treasure?’ he continued. ‘And the soul of a D’Archangel? D’you have any idea how much they would fetch on the open market?’

  There was stunned silence from his audience.

  ‘In fact,’ he went further, ‘why not do what Finwald was trying to do? Revive Drauglir – imagine that! Your very own rawgr-lord at your beck and call!’

  ‘You wouldn’t have!’ Nibulus gaped, scarcely able to believe what he was hearing. ‘You couldn’t have!’

  ‘Not even you!’ Appa echoed.

  ‘Why not?’ Kuthy protested. ‘Is that so evil?’

  They were flabbergasted. ‘Well, yes, of course it is!’ said Nibulus.

  ‘If you could manage to control him, he’d be just a weapon, a very powerful weapon. And since when have any of us ever turned our noses up at weapons, eh, Peladane? I don’t see why you should have to destroy him.’

  ‘He was a rawgr, FOR PEL’S SAKE!’

  ‘That’s just your name for him.’ Kuthy shrugged, licking his lips. ‘He never called himself that.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, the bloody name!’ Appa trilled almost hysterically. ‘He was still evil. That’s what rawgrs are!’

  ‘Define evil,’ Elfswith demanded, recumbent now in the bow.

  ‘They’re stronger than us,’ Nibulus declared vehemently. ‘They kill us just for their sick sport and consume us!’

  ‘Oh, and that’s it, is it?’ Kuthy snorted. ‘That’s your definition of evil? Even though we’re stronger than the hart and the boar, which we also kill and consume?’

  ‘For sport too,’ Elfswith pointed out.

  ‘For sport too,’ Kuthy confirmed.

  The company from the south stared at the pair of northerners in disbelief. But there was nothing they could say to that. Nothing at all.

  ‘Well, it’s gone now,’ Kuthy concluded ruefully, ‘the power, the sword, the Rawgr – all gone forever. I don’t suppose any of us’ll ever know where it originated from, or what any of us would’ve done with the sword – or the Rawgr – if we’d had the chance. Well, maybe it’s better this way. No point crying over spilt milk.’

  ‘Or spilt blood,’ Wodeman said pointedly.

  ‘That too, I suppose.’

  Suppose? Suppose! Bolldhe reflected, though he did not have the energy to say it.

  ‘Suppose?’ Appa said for him. ‘You two really are a couple of hard-hearted bastards, aren’t you?’

  ‘Anyway,’ Elfswith pointed out, changing tack somewhat, ‘it all depends on what you’d do with the Rawgr once you got him under your control. D’you really believe we’d have used him for evil? Come to that, d’you believe Finwald would have either? Was he himself evil?’

  It was a fair point, they had to concede, and all eyes turned to Appa. After a long and thoughtful silence the mage-priest shook his head. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Finwald was not evil. Right up to the end I perceived nothing of that in him. He may have been a complete fool, but he was not evil.’

  ‘He was no fool either,’ Kuthy corrected him. ‘He knew what he could achieve if he had the means to control Drauglir.’

  ‘Which he got, too,’ Elfswith added, ‘and in no small amount either. In the end he had such power that even I was beginning to feel quite overwhelmed. I tell you, I could taste it in the air . . . though I still can’t imagine how or where he acquired it.’

  ‘They’ve probably got a fair idea where,’ Nibulus said, indicating the remnants of the party from Tyvenborg skulking at the far end of the ship.

  ‘Yes,’ Appa agreed. ‘The Finwald I once knew wasn’t the Finwald who came out of that fireplace with those lot. Who can guess what they must’ve witnessed? What a story they could tell! Not that they ever would, even if we still had Bolldhe to translate for us . . .’

  You still do have him, you idiot!

  ‘But I still say Finwald was a fool: the way he was, the way he always was. I should have seen it right at the beginning, years ago, even back in Qaladmir. The poor fool was bound to fail in the end. That constant pursuit of magic of his. With him it was always about power, power for himself. He cared little for truth, no matter what he told himself.’

  Appa stopped when he realized he was preaching as if he were back in his temple at Nordwas, but to his surprise found Wodeman staring at him and nodding.

  ‘Among my people,’ the Torca said, ‘the greatest attribute for anyone who seeks magic is patience. It’s considered the highest virtue to dedicate your whole life to the search for answers, but I don’t think that was the way with Finwald. He might have seemed patient in his studies, but he wanted it all too soon. And he wanted it big.’

  ‘Yes,’ Appa agreed, ‘things do have a way of getting out of hand, don’t they? You start something, you set things in motion; one thing leads to another, and before you know it, they’re leading you.’

  ‘As they have us,’ a small voice piped up at the back. They looked around and in the near
-darkness saw that Gapp had rejoined them.

  ‘What d’you mean, Greyboots?’ Wodeman asked.

  ‘What I mean is, what exactly have we been doing all these months? What was it all for? You do realize you could’ve simply smashed that sword right back at the beginning, don’t you? Right back in those mines where you first found it.’

  Bolldhe felt an extremely unpleasant iciness frost over his ailing flesh. That, he thought to himself, was something I really didn’t need to hear. But he did not say a thing. Nobody else said anything either, because nobody felt they could. The boy was absolutely right, and all they could do now was sit there frozen to their seats, as suddenly cold and motionless as Bolldhe.

  Appa, of all of them, seemed particularly mortified. He appeared to be having some sort of problem with his hands. He kept clenching and unclenching them in a way that suggested some measure of anguish, and it was an anguish that was growing steadily worse.

  Suddenly he lunged at Nibulus, knotted his bony little fingers in the big man’s tattered Ulleanh and yelled into his face, ‘The boy’s right! It was all bloody USELESS, wasn’t it! Your great quest was a total waste of time! We’re not triumphal heroes, not one of us! We’re nothing more than fools! The biggest idiots in the world!’

  Everyone jumped. Even those at the far end of the ship stared at the spectacle. For though the Peladane towered above the little priest, for a moment Appa, his eyes blazing and his jaw jutting, was again every bit the mad old terrier he had been in the past.

  Nibulus did not lift a finger to push him away, just stared back at his assailant. As he did so, he too began to feel the confusion and sickness that seemed to be emanating from the elderly priest before him. It was almost as if a great battle were going on inside him, as though he was struggling to understand the point of his very existence.