by Steve Feasey
The Draugr closed in again but had forgotten or was oblivious to the Nargwan demons advancing towards it from behind with their long spears. Suddenly one of them broke forward, stabbing the Draugr, thrusting the weapon viciously into the creature’s flank and twisting the blade inside the flesh. It was the last thing the demon ever did. The Draugr turned on its assailant, grabbed at the shaft of the spear and snapped it. Shooting an arm out, it snatched up the retreating demon by the neck and lifted it into the air. Dashing the dead demon to the ground, it turned back to the Elemental just in time to meet the rock fist that slammed into its face.
There was a sickening crunch as tooth and bone shattered under the force of the blow and the Draugr staggered backwards, shaking its head like a heavyweight boxer caught with a flailing right hook in the first round. One side of its face was a ruined mess and it spat a great globule of black blood and broken teeth on the ground, staring down at the gory mess. It was as if the sight of its own spilt blood made something inside the giant creature switch. The creature’s great inky-blue head lifted, eyes as black as coal regarding the stone monstrosity before it. It took a huge breath, filled its barrel chest to its fullest, issued a deafening bellow and charged at the Elemental again.
The revenant had hit the thing of stone and rock three or four times before the Elemental knew what was happening. As great chunks of masonry fizzed off into the night air the Draugr launched salvo after salvo of heavy blows at the rock-thing, smashing its fists into the creature, which was now backing away under the severity of the attack. One blow sent what had been the lower jaw of the Elemental spinning off into the darkness in a shower of rocks and pebbles. The Draugr was impossibly fast and agile for a creature of its size. Leaping high into the air, it clasped its hands together over its head and brought them down like a hammer on to the head of the Elemental, which staggered under the force of the blow. The Draugr would certainly have finished it off, but for the second spear that buried itself deep into its back. This spear was quickly joined by another that ripped through the flesh of the Draugr’s thigh, the metal-tipped head emerging on the other side in a fountain of blood and gore.
The giant revenant roared, bellowing its fury at the injustice of being denied its victory. It stumbled to one side, still reaching out to inflict one last blow before it collapsed. The stone-monster rocked back on its own heels, barely able to keep upright and reeling like a drunk on board a ship in high winds.
Slowly the demons closed in on the Draugr like hunting dogs encircling their prey. One of the Maug produced an axe, hefting the weapon in its hand, readying itself to make the final blow to decapitate the Draugr and end the creature’s long and pitiful existence.
‘We need to do something, Tom,’ Alexa hissed. ‘If this ends now, Charles and Trey will be trapped inside Leroth.’
The Draugr was down on one knee, its ruined leg held out stiffly to one side with a torrent of black flowing freely from the wound on to the rocks and stones that now littered the ground. It looked about in anger at the demons that were gathered around it in a tight circle, but its strength was ebbing away – carried from its body in the dark ribbons that snaked their way down into the ground. It was incapable of doing more than watch as the demons prepared to dispatch it.
The Maug eyed a spot on the Draugr’s neck and swung the long-handled axe through the air in a vicious arc that was intended to hack through bone and muscle and tendon. But the Draugr had one last ace up its sleeve. It waited until the very moment that the axe was due to bite into its flesh before instantly shrinking back to its original size. The axe sailed effortlessly over its head, its momentum carrying onward through its deadly arc until it buried itself deep into the chest of another demon standing to the left of the revenant. The Nargwan looked down in stunned disbelief at the sight of the protruding axe head before sinking to its knees, dead.
The low, rasping laugh that came from the Draugr rang about the open space and it looked round at its executioners with ill-disguised contempt, but its strength and fight were gone. It was now too weak to even face its opponents. Instead, it hung its head, waiting for the final blow to come.
The Draugr heard the grunt of the Maug as it swung the axe for the final time, but it never felt the cold steel of the blade cutting through its neck.
Instead, the world around it erupted in a rolling wave of flame that consumed everything in its path.
Trey and Charles hurried through the opening into what appeared to be a low corridor hewn through the glassy black rock. Trey tensed and scanned the passageway that disappeared off in both directions from where they stood, to ensure that they were not in danger of encountering a fresh batch of reinforcements making their way to join the melee outside.
It was eerily quiet and this sudden and complete lack of sound struck Trey as soon as they had entered – the noise of the battle outside would not be joining them in here. It had disappeared entirely the second that they had stepped through to this side of the wall – like some invisible shutter had slammed down, trapping the clamour behind it. Charles noted Trey’s confusion and reached out, tapping on the great fur-covered forearm nearest to him. ‘You’re not in the same plane any more,’ he explained. ‘As soon as we came through that aperture we stepped out of our world and into the Netherworld. Those sounds don’t belong here and won’t carry through to us.’
Trey looked towards the opening and noted how his view of the outside appeared to continue for only about twenty metres or so beyond the walls of the fortress, whereupon it simply fizzled out. The world beyond this that was Iceland was simply replaced by a swirling grey haze. Trey thought that he could see things moving around within the murky curtain, small dark things that darted around incredibly quickly as soon as his eyes fixed upon them. He wondered what was happening outside, and if Tom and Alexa were still OK.
‘They’ll be fine,’ Charles said, looking up at him. ‘Tom won’t allow anything to happen to her.’
Trey’s golden lycanthrope eyes seemed almost incandescent in the darkness. Very deliberately, Trey looked first left and then right before returning his attention to Charles.
‘You can communicate like this, now.’ Charles’s voice came to Trey as though he was murmuring straight into his ear, even though his lips had not moved. ‘This place only exists because of magic,’ Charles said, talking normally again, ‘and the only person that could detect us easily is outside at the moment with her hands full. We’re in the Netherworld now, at least a part of it that has been transported to the human realm. I’m in much greater danger of being discovered here than you are, Trey. I’m human. I don’t belong here – you do.’ The sorcerer looked up at the lycanthrope, a worried-looking smile on his face. ‘I will not use sorcery until I have to, as I’ll need to save my energy. I suggest that you do the same and only talk to me when you need to.’
Charles watched the werewolf stare down at the floor again, concentrating on the spell. His lips moved around the huge teeth set in his jaw and a series of rumbling growls issued from the great wolf head. ‘OK,’ Trey said eventually. ‘Which way do we go?’
Charles nodded in Trey’s direction. ‘You’ve really got the hang of that; you must have had a damn good teacher.’
The low growl came from deep within the werewolf’s chest. Trey peeled back his lips to reveal to Charles the full array of massive teeth set into his jaws. Charles guessed that it was the werewolf equivalent of a smile, but nonetheless an involuntary shudder skittered its way down his backbone.
‘I just had a terrible thought,’ Trey said. ‘What if Gwendolin has Mynor’s Globe on her? Out there.’ He nodded towards the opening.
‘She wouldn’t take an object as precious as that out of the tower. No, we have to believe that your information is correct and that it’s kept in her personal chambers.’
Charles turned to his left and right, peering at the twin walls of darkness that the corridor disappeared into. He pulled the map from his back pocket, but the light was l
ow and he could hardly make it out. ‘This passageway must encircle the inner courtyard and the tower itself. There must be an entrance somewhere along it. If I could see this map properly, I’d—’
He looked up and saw the huge figure of the werewolf heading off down the corridor to their right without so much as a backwards glance.
‘OK. Fine. Right it is then,’ said Charles, and set off after him.
The passageway was completely unlit, and as they left what little light had spilt in through the opening behind, they plunged ever deeper into a blackness that was now almost complete. Trey’s eyes were perfectly adapted to this environment, the structure of his werewolf eyes, with their much higher ratio of rods to cones, allowed him to see in the dark almost as well as he could in daylight. But he was aware of how acutely Charles was struggling behind him, losing his footing and stumbling every time the pitch of the floor changed beneath their feet, so Trey was forced to go much slower than he would have wanted to, sticking close to the other man and allowing his own presence and bulk to be a guide to the way ahead.
Eventually it became apparent that they were approaching a new opening set into the inner wall on their left. A peculiar purple light spilt into the darkness up ahead. Trey swiftly approached it, keeping close to the wall and moving silently to assess any new danger that might be waiting for them. Now that he could see again, Charles quickly caught up with him.
A light breeze blew in from the doorway and, as Trey approached the opening, the stench that it carried assaulted the most acute of his senses, making him reel backwards as if he had been physically struck.
‘Are you OK, Trey?’
The stink was incredible, like nothing that Trey had ever encountered before – as a human or werewolf. The acrid reek of rot and decay was overlayed by harsh and metallic and sulphurous smells that crowded over each other, competing to dominate. Trey gagged and fought to keep himself under control – his synesthesia transformed the smells into multitudinous colours, a conflagration of yellows, greens, reds and browns that crushed in on one another in front of his eyes and made his head spin.
‘The smell, Charles! What the hell is it?’
Charles took a sniff and screwed up his own face. He swallowed audibly, fighting to control his stomach. ‘Whoa! Yes, it’s pretty rank, I’ll grant you. Must be a hell of a lot worse for you. Are you OK?’
Trey shook his head but took a step towards the door. He shuddered as his stomach heaved in protest. He opened his mouth to breathe through that instead, but only succeeded in tasting the foul odour as well as smelling it. He fought to ignore it as best he could and approached the opening again to look up at the tower that rose into the sky overhead.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Charles said behind him.
Trey looked up at the sky, and the sight sent an icy trickle of fear coursing through him. The black sun still burned high overhead in the deep purple firmament.
‘This is a small inner bailey,’ Charles said, able to see the map now. ‘It separates this outer wall from the inner tower. Strange, because it wasn’t at all obvious from the outside. It looked just like one huge tower rising out of rock from out there, eh?’
Trey scanned the colossal citadel that rose up in front of them. There appeared to be a series of cages hung from chains suspended from outcrops in the walls high above their heads, although there seemed no way that these could be accessed as there were no apertures in the walls of the giant fortress until about two-thirds of the way up, and these appeared to be little more than tall, vertical arrow-slits of the sort that Trey had seen in pictures of castles in the human realm.
Charles followed the line of Trey’s sight. ‘Gibbets,’ he said. ‘For displaying the tortured and mutilated bodies of Caliban and Gwendolin’s enemies. By the look of them, quite a few appear to be occupied. It clearly doesn’t pay to get on the wrong side of the master of this place.’
The smell was still bothering Trey, making it difficult for him to focus fully. Suddenly there was a flash of movement overhead, quickly followed by another and another. Small black shapes appeared to detach themselves from the beams supporting the dangling metal cages and swooped down in their direction. Trey watched as maybe twenty or so of these shapes approached from different directions, growing in size and detail as they flew down from their perches. They began to circle in the air above them, hissing noisily.
They were the first winged demons that Trey had ever seen, and while they were small – about the size of a domestic cat – he considered how these creatures perfectly fitted the image that he would have conjured up in his imagination if anyone had asked him, back when his life had been normal, to think of a demon. They had black humanoid bodies with leathery wings that grew out from between their shoulder blades. Muscular legs hung down from the torso, and the feet ended with disproportionately large and curled birdlike claws protruding from the toes; the same needle-like talons were also visible at the ends of the creatures’ fingers. Mean, sharp faces stared out at the intruders through baleful black pinprick pupils set into red eyes that never blinked. The wings flapped in a scooping motion to keep the demons in the air. But it was the tail that caught Trey’s eye. Long and ringed like a rat’s tail, it ended in a small triangular barb that Trey could remember drawing on pictures of devils and demons that he had made as a young boy.
Trey and Charles stood and watched the acrobatics of the tiny demons as they wheeled in the air above their heads. Then, without warning, one of the small creatures swooped down towards them, folding its wings in behind it and dive-bombing the pair. It shot past Charles’s face – a flashing blur of black – raking at his flesh with its small, daggered hands, before rejoining the flock overhead.
The wound didn’t bleed immediately. It was as if the nerves and blood vessels were momentarily paralysed – in a state of shock – from the damage that had been inflicted upon them. Then, as quickly as the small demon had swooped down out of the sky, Charles’s face began to spout a crimson waterfall of blood that spilt vigorously down his cheek and neck, instantly soaking into the material of his shirt. His hand instinctively flew up to the wound and he pressed the torn ribbons of flesh hard against his face with a splayed palm.
Another demon dive-bombed Charles, quickly followed by another that had peeled away from the gathering flock and followed its companion in a racing dive through the air. Trey threw out a clawed hand and tore the first of them from the sky above Charles’s head, sending the demon crashing to the floor no more than a metre from where they stood. Raising his foot, Trey stamped down on the creature’s prone body. At the sight of the other demon’s death, the second attacker quickly veered away from Charles and headed directly for Trey’s face, its lips curled back to reveal rows of tiny teeth that reminded Trey of a piranha. Trey waited until it was nearly upon him. He could clearly see the vehement look on the creature’s ugly little face, its hooked claws extended towards his own as it sought to avenge its companion’s death. At the very last second Trey rocked to one side, twisting his head and snapping his huge jaws together to sever the creature’s head from its body. He watched the decapitated torso crash to the ground, wings still flapping, unaware that the signals being sent to them were the last they would ever receive.
Charles was twisting and ducking to avoid the increased attacks that were being made upon him too. A demon had landed on his back and was clinging to him, its talons buried deep into his flesh. Trey ran over, crushed the creature in his hand and threw it to the ground.
‘Trey,’ Charles shouted, ‘can you keep them off me for a second?’
Without a word, the lycanthrope leaped up into the swarm of winged demons, clawing and biting at any foolish enough to come near him. Their attention concentrated on him and the swarm regrouped to launch a concerted attack on the werewolf.
Behind him, Charles stood stiff-backed, hands held out before him with the palms upturned. He closed his eyes, oblivious to the river of blood that still poured from his face.<
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Trey rocked back again, narrowly avoiding an attack, catching the wing tip of one of the creatures between his incisors and throwing the demon to the ground with a twist of his head. He glanced behind him towards the young sorcerer and saw Charles’s body stiffen, then jerk violently, his fingers suddenly closing to form two tight fists. Trey dodged as another of the demons dropped towards him, but didn’t take his eyes off Charles. The sorceror’s body jerked again, his eyes flew open and he thrust both hands into the air over his head as if throwing invisible dust at the heavens.
There was a moment of pure and complete silence, a millisecond of utter nothingness. Then the fifteen or so demons still wheeling around their heads burst into flames and fell from the sky, hitting the ground with low thumping sounds as their still-burning bodies crashed into the dirt. Trey looked back at Charles, who was reapplying pressure to his wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood. He looked pale, and Trey worried that he might be in danger of going into shock. Charles returned Trey’s look, nodding that he was in fact OK.
‘What was that?’ Trey said.
‘Never mind. Did any of them escape?’ Charles said. His speech was slurred and he spat a large globule of blood on to the ground in front of him.
Trey looked around him at the little islands of fire and then up into the sky. ‘No, I think you wiped them all out with whatever the hell it was that you just did.’
‘Good. We need to get out of the open quickly. Then I need you to patch me up.’
They ran towards the base of the tower, relieved to discover an enormous door no more than forty feet or so from where they had been standing. Trey was not surprised that they had not seen it immediately upon entering the bailey. It was black and appeared to be made from a solid piece of some strange metal that was icy cold to the touch. Set into the inky walls it was almost invisible. There was no handle and no lock, and even when Trey put his considerable weight against it, the thing wouldn’t budge.
