Murgan and other members of the gun corps rushed to Valkar’s aid, but Kurn could see they wouldn’t reach him in time. He dropped his axe, unslung his rifle, and put the weapon to his shoulder. He lined up his shot, took a breath, and pulled the trigger. The carbine kicked his shoulder, and ten yards away the human’s head snapped forward as the heavy slug plowed through it. The man dropped dead at Valkar’s feet.
“Regroup!” Murgan shouted, and Kurn and the other dwarves began pulling back into shield formation—a wise precaution if there were more bandits.
“Thank you, Kurn,” Valkar said once they were back in formation. “He’d have killed me for sure.”
Kurn smiled, held up the flask he’d taken off the bandit, and shook it so Valkar could hear the contents slosh inside. “Like I told you, I always shoot better with a drink.”
THE LAST HUNT
By William Shick
Winter, The Scarsfell Forest
He moved beneath the canopy of mighty evergreens, which allowed few rays of the waning sun through their thick boughs. To Lugurix, a white mane of Yugar Tuath, every noise in the forest gave him information required for survival. He could infer the lack of nearby predators from the calls of birds and the movements of small animals beneath the crisp layer of frost-coated detritus. His acute sense of smell could detect even the faintest scent of prey, but now he smelled the strong, coppery tang of fresh blood. Following the scent trail, he soon found the mutilated body the smell originated from.
He moved quickly toward the carcass, recognizing the heavily muscled creature as a gorax. Lugurix kneeled and breathed in deeply. Beneath the gorax’s pungent musk he could make out the scent of another great beast—a forest mauler. He spotted a broken bough, its green needles and grey-brown bark covered in dark crimson. Picking up the branch and bringing it to his nose, Lugurix smiled at the gift the Devourer had bestowed upon this day’s special hunt.
He rose and motioned to a smaller figure behind him who wore heavy furs similar to his own. Despite their difference in size, the young Tharn possessed the same predatory features as Lugurix, including the same yellow-flecked brown eyes.
Lugurix cringed as Grimhilt bounded forward at his gesture, any care to silence his footfalls forgotten in his enthusiasm of hunting alongside the white mane. As the young Tharn came within reach Lugurix grabbed him by the throat and yanked him off the ground. “If you continue to crash about, I shall end this hunt early and return with your carcass to our tuath,” he whispered.
Grimhilt kicked helplessly in the air for a moment and grasped at Lugurix’s hands about his throat. “Forgive me, Father,” he choked out, keeping his gaze averted in submission.
Lugurix set the boy down and released his grip. Despite his actions, he held no anger toward his youngest son; he simply wished for the lesson to take root. Grimhilt would come of age in only a few days, when he would undergo the change that would allow him to channel the power of the Wurm. Then he would no longer be considered a child and would forfeit all privileges and protections provided by that status. His life would be measured only by his skill and his cunning within the tuath. This hunt was the last Lugurix and Grimhilt would take as father and son. If they hunted again, it would be as fellow warriors.
He handed Grimhilt the branch. “Tell me, what does this show you?”
The young Tharn took the branch from Lugurix and carefully examined it. “It is freshly broken, perhaps only an hour past.” He sniffed, pausing to consider the scents that filled his nostrils before continuing. “The blood is not from the gorax. It is from a forest mauler.”
Lugurix smiled, his thin lips revealing elongated canines. “Yes. The Wurm guides our hunt today. Let us prove ourselves worthy of his gifts.” He drew a wickedly serrated hunting knife from his belt and presented it handle-first to Grimhilt. “Today you shall complete your last hunt as a child not with a bow but with a blade.”
Lugurix watched his son’s face carefully, looking for any sign of fear or trepidation. He was pleased to see neither as Grimhilt grasped the worn leather hilt of the knife. The blade was sized for a fully transformed male, and in Grimhilt’s hands it looked more like a short sword than a hunting knife. Despite its size the young Tharn wielded it easily, taking a few practice swipes before shoving it through his own belt.
Lugurix took his powerful hunting bow from his back and nodded to Grimhilt to take the lead. This time the youth moved swiftly and silently, as Lugurix had taught him. The elder Tharn recalled their first hunt together, when the boy had barely turned five. Lugurix had brought down a massive elk with a well-placed shot, leaving it alive but immobile. Grimhilt had not hesitated when Lugurix placed a dagger in the boy’s hand. He had instead darted beneath the powerful creature’s antlers and slit its throat, claiming his first kill for the Devourer.
The smell of their prey was heavy in the air, and Lugurix could almost taste the mauler’s musk. He felt the urge to cast off his heavy fur cloak and transform, letting the Wurm take hold of his entire body. He did not fight it. He felt the tingle of energy course through his veins as he summoned forth the Devourer. His muscles expanded and his bones lengthened. The visage of a snarling, viscous predator replaced his human face, and razor-sharp fangs gleamed from his lupine snout.
He looked ahead to Grimhilt, who was scaling a pine tree. Even without the power of the Wurm imbuing him, the youth bounded up the tree with grace and agility. The young Tharn would wait for his signal to attack. Lugurix drew a six-foot arrow from the quiver on his back and placed it on the string of his bow.
Slowly, he moved toward the shadow of his prey, drawing his bow with practiced ease. His eyes were locked on the massive form of the forest mauler. He could see a ragged gash along its hindquarters, along with several lesser wounds from its fight with the gorax. The beast moved slower than usual, its wounds clearly affecting it. Its injuries gave them a chance.
They had been careful to stay downwind lest they alert the mauler to their presence. As the creature swung its large head about, Lugurix could see the bony protrusions that radiated from its short snout. Each antler-like growth contained a sensory bulb, and the mauler’s senses were very keen. The creature paused, steam blowing from its nostrils as it tested the air. Time was short.
Lugurix drew in a breath, his body still despite the strain of keeping the massive Tharn bow drawn. He loosed the javelin-like arrow from his bow and sent two more sailing after the first.
A trio of dull wet thumps followed by a pained bellow told Lugurix he had hit his mark. He dashed forward, drawing another arrow and loosing it at the roaring mauler. Though each shaft sank deep into the creature’s thick, leathery hide, the white mane knew they were not enough to slay the great beast.
Lugurix saw Grimhilt leap from his perch above, Lugurix’s massive hunting knife glinting like a steel fang. Tharn and blade crashed onto the wounded mauler’s back, causing the beast to buck and roar with rage. Holding on with powerful legs, Grimhilt slammed the blade again and again into the mauler’s thick hide, each strike sending a spray of arterial crimson into the air.
Lugurix dropped his bow to pull his mighty axe from his back and charged. He ducked a swipe of the creature’s wicked claws and brought his weapon up in a powerful swing. The axe bit deep into the mauler’s neck. Muscles straining, Lugurix pulled the axe free and swung again, this time from above. The blow cleaved through the beast’s spine, and its head fell to the frozen earth.
The forest returned to stillness as steam rose from the bloodstained ground. Grimhilt looked at his father, and Lugurix returned the look with a surge of pride. He no longer saw a child; a blood-covered Tharn warrior stood before him now. The white mane held out his hand, and Grimhilt quickly returned the hunting knife. Wasting little time, Lugurix set about carving open the fallen mauler’s chest. His muscles burned as he opened the beast’s chest cavity and ripped out the warm heart.
Dark
ness had overtaken the forest. It was the night of Calder’s new moon, with only the weaker light of its two sisters to illuminate the forest. Grimhilt watched, waiting for his father to feast on the essence of his prey to commune with the Devourer Wurm.
Lugurix placed his hand on his son’s shoulder in a brief moment of affection and thrust the mauler’s heart toward him, saying, “Finish your offering to the Wurm, and may he reward you with his strength in the days to come. This was your hunt. This is your kill.”
Grimhilt nodded reverently, then brought the massive bloody muscle to his mouth and began his first feast as a warrior of the Tharn.
MURDER IN
THE HONOR FIELDS
By Larry Correia
Khadoran-Occupied Laedry, 606 AR
He’d been summoned in the middle of the night, which meant someone had died. An entire unit of Winter Guard waited for him, which suggested a crime of violence and a scene in need of securing. A kapitan was calling the shots, which meant the victim had been someone important.
“Halt! Who goes there?” called out a jumpy sentry.
“Lieutenant Inspector Ivan Durova.” He answered immediately, before the young man was tempted to aim that blunderbuss in his direction. He hadn’t survived a decade of hard service in the Winter Guard to get himself shot on accident on this mundane assignment. “Kapitan Gurko requested my presence.”
Nearby, the kapitan heard his voice and gestured for the guards to let him pass.
“Why are we in a graveyard?” Durova asked as he approached his commanding officer.
“Don’t call it a graveyard. That offends the Umbreans,” Yelena Gurko said as she aimed her lantern at the rusted iron fence. “This place is known as the Honor Fields.”
He knew that, of course. Still . . . old tombs, narrow paths lined with spiked iron fences, and crumbling statues, all covered with a moist, clinging fog and prickly overgrown vines . . . It looked like a graveyard to him, and not a very nice one at that. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“We must appease the Llaelese locals if we are to maintain order, Durova.” She began walking down the twisting path. Using his truncheon as a cane, he limped along behind her. “Our occupation will be far easier if we are seen as liberators rather than conquerors, and that means respecting the local Llaelese traditions.”
He’d never much cared for Llael, and he liked the place even less after their Resistance had blown him up, but he kept his opinions to himself. “So who is the victim?”
“Andor Gobyato.”
“The magziev?” It wasn’t often a powerful arcanist got himself murdered. No wonder Gurko had gotten him out of bed. “The Greylords Covenant won’t be pleased,” he said.
“I’m honestly not looking forward to giving them the report,” Gurko said.
“Was it those damned gun mages again?” A number of recent murders had turned out to be connected to the Llaelese Resistance. Dozens of Llaelese had already been tried and executed in connection to their activities. He was a lowly inspector, though, so he was allowed to work up only the initial reports on such cases. The renegades were considered an internal security matter, so just when things got interesting, Section Three would take over and he’d be sent back to checking alibis and whatnot.
“If only it were. Bullet holes, even magical ones, are easy to explain. This is proving to be more difficult. Hopefully you’ll be able to tell me what happened here.”
Gurko was a clever officer. If she were stumped, this might actually be an interesting case. “I’m intrigued,” Durova said.
“Good. I know you find your current occupation dull compared to leaping into ditches to strangle trenchers, but I need that analytical brain of yours right now, Durova.”
After he’d been crippled in battle, it hadn’t mattered that he’d been awarded the illustrious Anvil of Conquest; the Winter Guard had no use for someone who could neither march nor run. Rather than retire, he’d joined the small and ill-regarded investigative division of the guard. His former rank earned him the title of Inspector, but he spent most of his time handling the drunk and disobedient along with the occasional soldier killed outside of combat. A guardsman was meant to be a soldier for the Motherland, not a glorified nanny. Luckily, he turned out to be one of the few who were actually good at solving crimes, which kept him from dying of boredom.
The kapitan halted and motioned toward an old Umbrean tomb encircled by watchful Winter Guard. They had hung several lanterns to help chase away the mist. “A patrol found him an hour ago,” she said.
Durova walked into the overlapping circles of light, careful not to step on anything. He stopped and slowly turned, taking it all in. Magziev Gobyato’s body had been lifted and impaled on the spikes of a tall iron fence near the tomb.
“A killer who honors tradition,” Durova suggested.
“What tradition?” Gurko asked.
“Some of the ancient Umbrean horselords favored impalement as a method of execution.” He approached the body slowly, studying the tracks and their relative depth in the moist soil compared to his own weight. The footprints of the patrol who had found the corpse were easy to distinguish, as the soldiers had stepped in the congealing blood. Other prints, though—larger, deeper ones—looked to have already been there when the blood began to pool. The inspector bent to examine those more closely.
Whatever had impaled the magziev on the fence had weighed more than any three of them put together, even taking into account the victim’s weight. Add the height of the fence and the angle of the spikes through the corpse, and the strength required was significant. With surprise, Durova recognized a sensation he hadn’t felt in some time: excitement tinged with fear.
“The killer wore armored boots—badly rusted, judging by the flaking. He weighs approximately five hundred pounds and is at least seven feet tall,” he stated, almost as if to himself.
The kapitan considered this. “Only ogrun are that big or that strong. There are very few in Laedry, and most of those work for mercenary companies. I’ll order them all rounded up for interrogation.”
But Durova wasn’t listening, his attention entirely absorbed by the corpse and the area directly around it. Based on the blood spatter and the lack of signs indicating a blow to the head, the magziev had been alive when impaled upon the spikes and had thrashed quite a bit before perishing.
Gobyato had earned a fearsome reputation for killing Cygnaran soldiers with ice magic. The inspector followed the tracks back to where they originated at the tomb, and sure enough, all the vines and grass there was crunchy, scorched dead by sudden icy cold. The magziev had struck his attacker with arcane energy, but it had not mattered.
A large iron pry bar lay discarded amid the dead grass. The door to the tomb hung open; from the disturbed rust, it had had been broken open recently. “Has this building been secured?” Durova asked.
“Yes, of course,” Kapitan Gurko replied. “I had the area cordoned off, and I personally examined the body and the tomb. I saw enough to tell me I was out of my depth. That’s why you’re here.”
Durova grunted. She’d been right to summon him. “I believe Magziev Gobyato may have been treasure hunting on his own time.” Taking one of the lanterns, he poked his head inside the tomb. The soldiers probably hadn’t noticed the intricate runes carved all along the interior of the doorframe. He couldn’t read them, but they were obviously arcane in nature—necromantic if he had to make a guess. Carved pictures of a noble horselord covered the ceiling. These seemed to tell the story of a rise to greatness and a subsequent fall into darkness. One carving depicted what appeared to be a great ceremony with the mighty horselord in shackles, and another showed the imprisonment of a twisted creature in a tomb that looked very much like the one he was standing in.
Durova felt his pulse rise at the sight. What in Morrow’s name are we dealing with here?
Inside the tomb w
as a single enormous stone sarcophagus. It was empty; the stone lid had been knocked aside. That, too, was covered in runes—lines and lines of cramped symbols. Except for a handful of early Menite symbols, the unfamiliar language looked like Old Khardic. On a hunch, Durova went back, retrieved the pry bar, and used that to lever the lid so that he could see what the interior side looked like.
The stone had been scratched thousands upon thousands of times. He compared the span of the scratches to his own hand. The grooves were set wider but had clearly been made by fingernails. Yet the hardness of the stone suggested that such an effort would have taken hundreds of very frustrating years. The magziev had accidentally released something that had been trapped for a very long time.
Durova carried the pry bar back out and approached Gurko. The open air was a relief. “I have good news and bad news, Kapitan.”
“Always the bad news first.”
The lieutenant inspector did not hesitate. “Laedry has some manner of unnatural monstrosity loose within it,” he said. “We need to track it down and destroy it or it won’t be just an unlucky magziev we’ll be burying.”
Kapitan Gurko sighed and asked, “And your good news?”
He looked back to the tomb. “I am no longer bored.”
BOUND FOR HOME
By Michael G. Ryan
Cloutsdowns Province
They followed the darkness, and the darkness followed them. It surrounded the small, vicious group of bane thralls, a preternatural blackness that enshrouded and flickered out from them in tendrils, enveloping all the life and light it could suffocate in its bitter coldness. They had come over a hundred miles since losing the Satyxis captain who had commanded them north of New Larkholm on the Cygnaran coast; now they followed their new leader as it obsessively led them across the countryside, laying waste to whatever life they encountered on the way to a village none of them knew anything about.
Iron Kingdoms Excursions: Season One Collection Page 4
