Frostborn: The Dwarven Prince (Frostborn #12)

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Antenora,” said Third. “Quickly! Employ your flame. It shall regenerate otherwise.”

  A wet squelching noise came from the koballat’s neck, and a thick bubble appeared atop the spine. With a wave of revulsion, Gavin realized the koballat was growing itself a new head.

  Antenora heaved herself to her feet, ripping the quarrel from her belly at she did so. She took a step forward, and a gout of flame snapped from the end of her staff, bathing the stump of the koballat’s neck. There was a harsh sizzling noise, a foul smell, and the koballat went motionless.

  “Hasten!” said Third. “Fire is the only way to kill them. The others shall need our help.”

  Gavin nodded and hurried towards the men-at-arms, Third and Antenora running at his side. Antenora seemed no worse the wear for the crossbow bolt she had taken. The curse of dark magic she bore made her immortal, and had taken her ability to feel pleasure or pain, but on the other hand, it let her shake off a crossbow bolt through the gut with minimal trouble. He felt sorry for her, but he was also relieved. He didn’t want to see her hurt or in pain.

  Then he charged into the battle, and there was no more time for thought.

  Sir Ector’s men-at-arms had formed into a shield wall, as had those merchants strong enough to fight. The mass of koballats, nearly thirty of the creatures, charged at the shield wall, their axes rising and falling. The men-at-arms fought back with vigor, and even as Gavin looked, he saw Kharlacht take off the left arm of a koballat with a swing of his greatsword. The scaled arm fell twitching to the ground, but already a new one, wet and glistening, started to grow from the stump.

  Gavin charged into the battle, slashing right and left with Truthseeker, catching the blows of axes upon his shield and ducking under the stabbing claws. He took the head from one of the koballats, and Antenora struck at once, burning the stump with a burst of fire from her staff. Another koballat came at her, but Third interposed herself, short swords flashing, and the koballat fell, the black slime of its blood leaking across the flagstones. Antenora burned it, and they drove deeper into the melee.

  A koballat sprang at Gavin, axe raised. He braced himself to block, and then a shaft of blazing yellow-orange fire stabbed through the battle, slicing the koballat in half from groin to head. Both halves of the creature fell to the ground, smoking and hissing from the intense heat of the spell.

  He saw Calliande, Ridmark, Caius, Sir Ector, and Sir Bors hurrying from the doors to the basilica. Gavin wondered what had taken them so long, then realized that little more than a minute had passed since the alarm horn had sounded.

  Another blast of fire ripped two koballats in half as the Keeper of Andomhaim threw her powers into the fray.

  ###

  Calliande called on elemental fire, weaving a spell through the mantle of the Keeper to augment its power.

  She didn’t know what the creatures standing before her were, but they reminded her of trolls, though they looked as if they had been created by mashing together human and orc and troll. They seemed to be regenerating the way that the trolls of Vhaluusk had done. At the time, Morigna’s acidic mist had been the only weapon they had to inhibit their regeneration, but now Calliande could employ elemental magic of her own, and she threw bolts of fire at the creatures and set them aflame.

  “God and the saints,” said Ector. “What are those things?”

  “Koballats,” said Caius, drawing his dark elven war hammer from over his back. “Creatures of the Sculptor. He fashioned them by…”

  “Keep the creatures away from Calliande!” said Ridmark, and he stepped next to her, the sigils upon his black staff glowing in response to the faint aura of dark magic Calliande’s Sight saw within the creatures.

  Whatever the koballats were, they were not stupid. They realized that Calliande was the primary threat, and they came at her. Ridmark sprang to her defense, his black staff whirling in his hands, and he sent two of the koballats crashing to the ground. Calliande cast a cone of flames from her free hand, sweeping it back and forth over the fallen koballats to inhibit their regeneration. Bors and Ector sprinted towards the men-at-arms, Bors calling for his knights to join the defense of the town, while Ector rushed to join his men

  Caius and Ridmark fell into a pattern, fighting to keep the koballats from reaching Calliande. Caius sent them sprawling with blows from his hammer, and Ridmark took off their heads with a few chops of his dwarven axe. Calliande then hit the fallen koballat with a burst of elemental fire. Across the forum she saw Gavin and Antenora battling side-by-side, employing the same tactics. Calliande wished she could have called more fire, enough to consume all the koballats at once, but she dared not. She had better control than Antenora, but elemental fire was still difficult to wield, and if it blazed out of control it could kill everyone in the forum.

  No, better to take the slower path. Already half of the koballats had fallen. Some of the men-at-arms and merchants had been wounded, but Calliande’s Sight detected the flare of the Well’s magic as Camorak worked to heal them. Calliande focused upon burning the koballats as Ridmark and Caius knocked them down, but part of her mind moved to the next step. Were these the only koballats in the town? Or were they the advance party of an invading army? If so, Castra Durius needed to prepare for battle, perhaps even a siege…

  “Keeper!” Third’s cold voice cracked like a whip. “Beware!”

  Calliande looked up just as her Sight detected the surge of dark magic.

  ###

  Ridmark saw the winged creature descending towards them.

  The creature was an urdhracos, just as Third had been before her transformation. As with all the other urdhracosi that Ridmark had seen, this one was female, wearing close-fitting armor of dark plates, her hands concealed in clawed black gauntlets. The black void of Incariel filled her eyes, stark against her gaunt, pale face.

  Unlike the other urdhracosi Ridmark had fought, this one wore a strange mask.

  Her head had been shaved, and a peculiar steel mask covered the left side of her face. As the urdhracos fell towards them, Ridmark saw that sigils ringed the eyehole of her mask, all of them glowing with harsh blue light.

  The urdhracos’s clawed fingers came up, talons dancing with purple fire and shadow.

  Calliande shouted and thrust her staff over her head, and a shimmering dome of white light appeared above them just as the urdhracos finished her spell. A blast of shadow-wrapped blue fire ripped from the urdhracos’s fingers, shattering against Calliande’s warding spell. Ridmark expected the masked urdhracos to circle over the forum, to take another run at Calliande.

  Instead, the urdhracos folded her wings and dove.

  At the last instant, Ridmark realized what the creature intended, and he grabbed Calliande’s shoulder and pulled her back. She yelped in surprise, and the urdhracos hit the ground with enough force that Ridmark felt the vibration beneath his boots.

  The urdhracos sprang to her feet with inhuman speed, and as she did, her black leathery wings expanded. Her right wing hit Ridmark and Calliande in the face. It felt like getting hit with a giant pillow, but it hit with enough force to knock Ridmark from his feet, and Calliande landed next to him.

  The urdhracos lunged with the speed and grace of a serpent, talons reaching for Calliande’s throat.

  Ridmark reacted on pure reflex, rocketing back to his feet and striking with his staff. The end of the weapon hit the urdhracos in the shoulder, and the creature rocked back. Calliande scrambled backward, trying to get to her feet, and Ridmark stepped between her and the urdhracos.

  The urdhracos tilted her head to the side. Both Mara and Third often displayed the same mannerism, and the urdhracos’s similarity to both of his friends was unnerving.

  “The Gray Knight,” said the urdhracos. She had Third’s cold, dead tones, but a throb of power waited just beneath her words.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” said Ridmark, and he attacked. The urdhracos retreated, her clawed gauntlets blurring back and forth to m
eet the blows of his staff. Calliande cast a spell at her, throwing a shaft of white fire, and the urdhracos leaped into the air, wings beating, and landed a dozen yards away. Blue fire crackled around her fingers as she began another spell, but she paused.

  All the koballats had been slain, and the men-at-arms advanced towards the urdhracos. They posed no threat to her, as weapons of normal steel could not harm an urdhracos, but Gavin came with them. For that matter, Caius and Kharlacht and Third all had weapons of dark elven steel, and those could harm her.

  The urdhracos looked back and forth, and then smiled at Ridmark.

  “Until we meet again, Gray Knight,” she said. “It will be soon.”

  She flung her spell, hurling a blast of dark magic at Calliande. At once Calliande cast her ward, and the urdhracos’s spell shattered against it. She struck back, as did Antenora and Camorak, but the urdhracos used the distraction to move. She soared into the air, weaving around the magical attacks, and then plunged back towards the ground. Her wings opened in time to keep her from crashing into the earth, and she flew away down one of the streets, keeping the houses and shops between her and Calliande. A few moments later Ridmark saw her take to the air again, fly over the wall, and vanish towards the mountains of Kothluusk to the west.

  He looked around the forum, but the koballats were dead, and he didn’t hear fighting coming from anywhere else in the town.

  The battle, it seemed, was over.

  ###

  “The koballats,” said Caius, following Calliande and the others as she tended to the wounded, “are creatures of the Sculptor.”

  “I gathered as much,” said Ridmark.

  Calliande knelt next to a wounded man. He had taken a spear through the belly, and he would die in the space of an hour without aid.

  Fortunately, aid was at hand.

  Calliande summoned the magic of the Well, her fingers glowing with it, and put her hands on either side of the wounded man’s head. His temples felt cold and clammy beneath her fingers, and he blinked at her in confusion.

  She cast the healing spell…and felt his pain as if it was her own. She felt the spear rip into her belly and burst through her back, felt the horrible agony flood through her as if it was her own. To heal wounds, a Magistria had to take the pain of the wounds into herself, and not all the Magistri could manage the necessary mental discipline.

  Calliande could, and she had healed more wounds than she could remember.

  She released her hands with a tired gasp, and the man groaned and slumped unconscious to the ground. Calliande took a deep breath and started to stand, but her knee quivered beneath her. Before she could fall, Ridmark’s hands caught her shoulders, and he helped her to stand.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “You should rest,” said Ridmark.

  Calliande shook her head. “Not while there are still wounded men.”

  “There are none left,” said Ridmark. “You and Camorak worked through them all.”

  She looked around. The forum before the basilica was gradually returning to normal, with the merchants reopening their stalls and the shoppers returning. It seemed that not even a koballat attack could slow commerce for long. Bors and his men-at-arms had hauled away the koballat corpses. At Caius’s advice, he had given orders to burn the corpses. Calliande thought that wise. She didn’t think the koballats could regenerate from having their heads cut off and the stumps of their necks cauterized, but she wasn’t sure.

  “I suppose I did,” said Calliande. “Brother Caius. You were telling us about the koballats?”

  “Aye,” said Caius. “I fought them when I still lived at Khald Tormen. They are one of the Sculptor’s newest creations. He could not create them until he had access to human blood, and humans only came to this world a thousand years ago.”

  “They’re some sort of hybrid?” said Calliande.

  “Of human, orc, and troll,” said Caius.

  “That shouldn’t be possible,” said Calliande.

  “Dark magic made it possible,” said Caius. “The koballats can blur in with their surroundings like the trolls and they have the keen senses of the orcish kindred and the natural cunning of humans.”

  “Natural cunning?” said Ridmark.

  “It makes them dangerous foes,” said Caius.

  “Then what are they doing here?” said Ridmark.

  “I think we know,” said Calliande. The Warden had wanted to steal her body to escape Urd Morlemoch. The Traveler had wanted to claim her power. But the Sculptor wasn’t imprisoned, and if Caius was right, he had no interest in ruling an empire.

  So what did the Sculptor want with her?

  Calliande didn’t know, but she had a sinking feeling that she was going to find out.

  There was a blue flash and Third appeared.

  “I have found no sign of the urdhracos,” said Third. “As for the koballats, I found their tracks leading to an empty part of the town wall. I suspect they were able to blur themselves and climb over the wall unobserved.”

  “Bors will be displeased,” said Ridmark.

  Calliande sighed. “I fear he will not have to worry about the koballats for long. No doubt they will try to find me again, or attack Khald Tormen.”

  “If they do,” said Ridmark, his voice hard, “we’ll be ready.”

  ###

  “You’re all right?” said Gavin as they walked with the others towards Castra Durius.

  “Of course,” said Antenora. “The sensation was unpleasant, but it caused me little pain.” A brief smile went over her gaunt face. “The curse upon me will not let anything as simple as a crossbow quarrel kill me.” She tugged up her vest just high enough to show her flat belly. The skin was gray and pallid, but unmarked. “You see?”

  “I do,” said Gavin, a wave of embarrassment going through him. His mind briefly wondered what the rest of her looked like under the dark clothes, and he pushed it away with a flicker of shame. But he was glad she was all right.

  He was surprised by how glad he was that she was all right.

  Chapter 6: Burning

  To Ridmark’s surprise, Sir Bors insisted upon the feast.

  He supposed it made sense. The men of Durandis had fought against both the Mhorite orcs of Kothluusk and occasional raiders from the Deeps for centuries. They always celebrated after a victory, rejoicing in survival and commemorating those who had fallen in battle. Ridmark had only visited Durandis once as a squire, before Mournacht had risen to prominence among the Mhorites, and he hadn’t realized how hated and feared the self-proclaimed Warlord of Kothluusk had been among the men of Durandis.

  Ridmark supposed there was little enough good news these days. He could not blame Sir Bors for wishing to celebrate it.

  So, he did not protest as they joined the feast in the great hall of Castra Durius. The long stone hall was one of the larger ones he had seen, with thick square pillars supporting the roof, balconies running along the walls, narrow windows admitting light from outside the castra. Long tables ran the length of the hall, and the guests of Sir Bors seated themselves as serving women lit the hearths along the walls to provide light. Ridmark, Calliande, Kharlacht, Caius, Gavin, Camorak, Antenora, Third, and Sir Ector were invited to sit with Sir Bors at the high table, though Antenora, as usual, placed herself in the corner, watching the hall for any threats to Calliande.

  At Sir Bors’ request, Caius led the guests in prayer, and then the toasts began. Bors welcomed his guests and thanked God, the men of Durandis, and his guests for the defeat of the koballat raiders. They drank a toast of Durandis brandy, much to Camorak’s pleasure, and Ridmark had to admit that it was good.

  Then Sir Bors toasted Ridmark, praising him for killing Mournacht on Black Mountain, and the hall erupted in cheers. Ridmark made himself sit through it. He felt no pride at killing Mournacht because it had accomplished nothing. He had killed both Mournacht and Tymandain Shadowbearer, but that hadn’t stopped Imaria from opening the world gate and touching
off the war with the Frostborn. It hadn’t stopped Imaria and the Weaver from killing Morigna.

  Anger and regret burned through Ridmark, but he kept it from his face. Mournacht had been a terrible enemy to Durandis, and even if Ridmark had failed to stop Imaria and the Weaver, at least Mournacht would not trouble the people of Durandis any longer.

  Of course, if they couldn’t stop the Frostborn, both Durandis and Kothluusk alike would be conquered by the Dominion of the High Lords.

  The cheers filled the hall, and Ridmark rose and bowed to Bors. They drank another toast of fine brandy, and Ridmark blinked as he sat back down, a flush of heat going through his face. The brandy was good, but it was strong.

  He was starting to see how Camorak had acquired his taste for strong drink.

  The feast continued, and the guests ate and drank, interspersed with more toasts at the knights praised the valor of their comrades. Caius began to speak, and soon he had the attention of the hall as he told of their adventures. Ridmark had to admit that Caius was a good storyteller, which was a necessary skill for a preacher. He made what had happened sound better than it had been. Listening to Caius, Ridmark could almost forget that he had failed to save Aelia, that he had failed to stop Tarrabus and Imaria and the Weaver.

  Almost…but not quite.

  Ridmark felt himself lapsing into a grim mood. He was tired, and the brandy had hit him harder than he had expected.

  He waited until the earliest possible moment courtesy allowed, and then excused himself and went to find his guest chamber. It was a small room in one of the keep’s towers, narrow but comfortable. Ridmark pulled off his boots and lay down, not bothering to discard the rest of his clothing, and fell asleep at once.