The Errantry of Bantam Flyn (The Autumn's Fall Saga)

by Jonathan French

  Deglan helped Sigrun set up their own tent and they eagerly crawled inside. The woman was asleep as soon as she was prostrate and Deglan arranged the furs over her. He lay back and watched his breath expel in steamy torrents until he drifted off beneath his own coverings.

  When the berserker's voice broke through his dreamless slumber, Deglan nearly screamed in fury. Sigrun was already sitting up, gathering herself to crawl from the meager shelter. In an impulse born from useless frustration, Deglan reached out and snatched her wrist without knowing what he was going to say. Before his impotent entreaty could be made, however, Sigrun hissed in anguish and pulled her arm free. Even in the dark of the tent, Deglan could see her cradling the arm he had grabbed.

  “I am sorry,” he said, knowing he had not gripped her hard enough to cause harm. He recalled her nearly inaudible cry of pain from the previous camp. “Are you hurt? Let me look.”

  “No,” Sigrun said, her voice soft and stern. “I must go.”

  Before he could do anything else, she fled the tent. Her steps and that of her escort crunched away through the snow. Deglan sat fuming for a moment, then growled and scrambled out of the tent.

  If he were foolish enough to confront Arngrim's twelve sons, then why not the man himself? He would demand that the jarl leave the woman be, at least for a night. At the worst, Crow Shoulders would strike his head from his body. Well, let it come. Deglan had lived a damn long time and he would be buggered if he let the fear of death from a bunch of bloodthirsty Middangearders keep him from his calling.

  The berserkers' fire was still blazing, but only one of the shaggy brutes was awake, his back turned. Deglan quickly sneaked around to the back of his own tent to block the man's view should he happen to turn. He could see the trail of footprints in the snow left by Sigrun and the other berserker. Oddly, they did not lead to Crow Shoulders' own tent, which lay only a little removed. No, the tracks led out away from the camp, across the drifts. The only thing which Deglan knew lay in that direction were the draugr. Was Arngrim surveying his army of corpses? Why would he wish Sigrun to join him out in the cold, amongst a horde of dead men left to mindlessly stand vigil through the night? Cursing into his mantle, Deglan set off, using the tracks already made to ease his slog through the deep snow.

  The draugr made little noise, but two thousand of them packed together emitted an eerie assonance. Upon the wind, Deglan could hear the creaking of frozen tendons, the jingle of ragged mail, the plinking of snowflakes upon metal helms. It was more a palpable presence than a sound, the air impregnated with the existence of two thousand creatures which did not breathe. They had been left within a small vale bordered by gently sloping ridges. Before Deglan began his trek down the easy grade, he paused, staring with distaste down at the assembled army standing lifeless in the moonlight. The wind tore the snow from the ridges, sending it sweeping down across the draugr, screening all but the nearest in an ephemeral curtain of swirling white.

  Sigrun's tracks led down into the vale for a ways, but broke off before reaching its fullest depth. They climbed the ridge, leading to the last survivors of a grove of firs still clinging to life on the ridge, defying the frost. Deglan continued on, his lungs and legs burning by the time he fought his way to the top of the slope. Voices caused him to duck and he crawled forward until he reached the trunk of the nearest fir. He waited, holding his breath, listening. The voices came again, nearly swallowed by the whistle of the air through the trees.

  Removing one of his mittens, Deglan dug through the snow at the base of the fir, wincing as the cold sliced into his fingers. Ice and snow were the domains of Water, but beneath the painfully cold powder was Earth. Deglan scrabbled bluntly at the frozen ground with his numb fingers. Magic may have renounced these lands eons ago, but it was still present, lingering within the Elements which it had created. Pushing his hand into the adamant dirt, Deglan implored aid from the Earth, as was the right of his race. He asked it to shield him, to bolster him. There was only a languorous response, the soil nearly lifeless. Deglan might have quickened the Element with his own blood, but he had no blade. Still, he felt the cold in his body abate, calming his shivers, steadying his breath.

  So bulwarked, he moved ahead cautiously, going slowly from tree to tree, keeping contact with the bark as much as he was able. The skeletal grove flirted with the edge of the ridge, but Deglan kept as far away from the slope as the trees allowed. The voices he heard grew nearer and he began to pick out the language of Middangeard. And then, through the trees, he spied four figures standing close to the edge. Arngrim Crow Shoulders was not among them. No, it was Sigrun and the berserker who had fetched her from the tent, conversing with Slouch Hat. Next to the husk stood a naked draugr, its armor and weapons lying in a heap upon the snow. The corpse had been a husky man in life and his pale flesh hung in folds around his middle.

  Hunkering down behind a tree, Deglan peered around the trunk and watched as Slouch Hat said a few more words to the berserker before gesturing to the draugr. The fjordmen tore his sword free from its scabbard and lopped the head off the draugr with such speed and ferocity that Deglan startled. The heavy body fell to the ground, now truly lifeless. Sheathing his blade, the berserker bent and hoisted the corpse across his broad shoulders before turning his back and hiking back the way he had come, leaving Sigrun and Slouch Hat on the ridge. Deglan ducked behind his chosen tree as the man passed and felt his stomach turn.

  So, Arngrim's sons had adopted the Bone Chewers' malediction. Like that animal Kàlfr the Roundhouse and his mate, Thorsa, the fjordmen were eating the flesh of the animated dead. Small wonder they were so disturbingly powerful. And so increasingly crazed. Did Crow Shoulders know the madness he had condemned his sons to suffer? Even the dwarrow eventually succumbed to the corruption that came from such a vile source of power. From what Deglan had seen, these mortal dogs would not last another year before they were nothing but slavering beasts, incapable of speech or reason. Good. Let the bastards die with their brains afire and froth on their lips. It was a fitting end, but what orgy of bloodlust would they enact before then? Grimacing in the darkness, Deglan shook his head. Arngrim wanted revenge on Fafnir for the death of his sire, and had irrevocably cursed his own children to see that vengeance fulfilled.

  When the man was fully lost from sight Slouch Hat turned to Sigrun.

  “That should keep them sated,” the husk said in the tongue of the Tin Isles. “By the time their craving returns, all this will be over.”

  Sigrun was silent for a moment, clutching her shawl tight against the cold. “How much longer will we journey?”

  “A few days more, I should think,” Slouch Hat replied. “Perhaps longer if the one the coburn chases loses his own way. Tomorrow we will reach the mountains and the way will become more difficult for you and the gnome.”

  “The Mother's Gale,” Sigrun stated with no trepidation.

  “Yes.”

  “What about the jarl?” Sigrun asked, a spark of challenge in her voice. “He is no longer young. Those winds could be his end.”

  Slouch Hat produced a thin, reedy laugh. “Crow Shoulders is driven by hatred. Though he partakes not of the draugr flesh, his hunger for the runecaster's death feeds his resilience. The mountains will not impede him. Once this dwarrow wizard is in sight he will be like a dog pulling at his chain and we will let him slip. He and his progeny can try to settle their pointless blood-debt with the dwarrow. Whatever the outcome, that feud is of no importance to us. No, it is you who will be in the most danger in the high passes. It will not be easy to endure the Gale, weak as you are.”

  Sigrun struck the husk. Had he been a man of flesh, the open handed blow would have split his lip. Slouch Hat's stuffed head snapped to the side at the impact.

  “Never call me weak,” Sigrun said, her voice low and measured.

  Slouch Hat kept his face averted as he nodded. Slowly, his hand came up and reached inside his jerkin, drawing forth a dagger. Deglan nearly rushed forward, b
ut stopped when he saw Sigrun remove her mitten and push back the sleeve of her coat, holding the exposed flesh of her forearm out to the husk.

  Slouch Hat took her wrist in his free hand and scrutinized something Deglan could not see. “It is healing less each time. I am sorry.”

  “Do it and let us have done,” Sigrun told him, her voice muddled through clenched teeth.

  With a swift sure jerk of the blade, Slouch Hat sliced into the woman's flesh. Sigrun choked as she tried to swallow a cry of pain. Blood poured from the wound, steaming in the air. Dropping the dagger, Slouch Hat pulled his tunic open and pressed the pumping gash to his straw-stuffed chest. Deglan watched as the blood soaked the husk's dry innards, the stalks absorbing the hot fluid. Sigrun's knees buckled and Slouch Hat guided her fall, kneeling with her to the snow, keeping her flowing arm pressed to him. The husk's hat was dislodged from his head and Deglan saw the iron crown beneath now glowing with an inner, eldritch fire. Nausea gripped the back of Deglan's throat and a roar filled the space behind his eyes, forcing them closed. He could feel the iron, feel it feasting on the woman's blood, growing in potency. His head swimming, Deglan clutched the tree to keep from falling. Pushing himself fiercely off the trunk, he fled, stumbling in the cold drifts. The tumescent power of the crown punched at the back of his skull as he ran. He had to get away, had to be far from here before the ritual was complete, before Slouch Hat sensed his presence.

  Deglan collapsed so many times during his flight that his clothes were sodden with snow by the time he reached the tent. He kept his eyes away from the berserkers' bonfire and their terrible feast, no longer caring if they saw him. Diving into the tent, Deglan flung himself upon the furs, eyes, teeth and fists clenched painfully as he violently shivered. A moan escape from his clenched jaw and he battled against the cold and the dread and the poisonous effects of the iron crown.

  Jerrod's crown.

  When the last Goblin King fell to his death, the evil thing should have passed to his eldest son, the Gaunt Prince, but it never did, for he was slain at the Battle of Nine Crowns. Instead, the crown remained in the Tower of Vellaunus, until centuries later it was removed by a husk possessed with the spectre of Jerrod's lover, slave and killer. Slouch Hat had become increasingly eclipsed by the young girl's vengeful spirit, until she used the husk's body to crown Jerrod's true heir at Castle Gaunt. Once in congress with the bloodline of the Goblin Kings, the crown's true power was made manifest. The fell energies Deglan had felt could only have come from the lineage of warlocks that marched nearly unbroken through the centuries from Penda Blood Coin to the Gaunt Prince, and from him to—

  A shiver racked Deglan's entire body, wrenching his spine back and forth as he convulsed. He willed the spasm to subside, biting back cries of anguish, drawing on every vestige of his Fae blessings. At last, his torments subsided and he lay spent upon the disheveled furs, forcing himself to breath slow and deep. He must have succumbed to exhaustion, passing in and out of fitful sleep. His body was cold and sore when he awoke, the thin haze of a frigid morning leaking into the tent. Sigrun lay asleep on the palette beside him, her face hidden in the folds of her shawl.

  When the cry came to break camp, she stirred and sat up, immediately setting to the task of rolling up the bedding.

  “Sigrun,” Deglan said. In truth, he had nothing in mind to say. He simply needed her to look at him.

  She turned expectantly and when their eyes met, Deglan beheld a familiar gaze. It was all there in the eyes, the same hue, the same lonesome compassion, the same open, intelligent stare he had seen so many times in the homely face of a changeling boy.

  Slouch Hat had always been too clever by half. Earth and Stone. He had found her.

  TWENTY NINE

  “Don't go getting too far ahead, East!” Flyn scolded the back of the wight's head. “And you, Southwest, stop pushing your sister!”

  Fafnir's daughters ignored his foolery and continued their immutable pace up the mountain trail. The wights walked, and sang, neither their steps nor voices ever faltering.

  At first, the melodious dirge had been beautiful, even inspiring, but before the she-dwarfs even led Flyn out of the Downward Fields, he had grown weary of their constant wailing. After the first day, he feared it was driving him mad. The only break he could force in the monotony of their voices was adding his own. Sometimes he produced bawdy harmonies to accompany the dworgmál melody. He would have felt ashamed had a dwarrow heard him, but once clear of their subterranean city, he lifted his voice lustily, finding comfort in the irreverence.

  “The juggler dropped and the rooster crowed and that's how a cock got balls!”

  Talking to the wights was another distraction. Fafnir had said their names, but Flyn could not recall them all, so he took to referring to the sisters as the eight points of the compass. Even this was absurd, for they did not encircle him, but were fanned out in front, guiding his steps at the ends of their chains. Still, it was eight names he could easily remember and provided some distinction to the nearly identical backs of the augurs' white heads.

  Traveling while tethered to the sisters had been simple while traversing the byways of the Downward Fields. Flyn was easily able to settle into their pace, measuring his strides so that the chains refrained from dragging, but were not uncomfortably taut. This ease had ended, however, when the wights led him through a narrow tunnel that gradually sloped upward. Still underground, it was impossible for Flyn to determine how long he hiked up that tunnel, but his legs were quivering and unsteady by the time it ended in a pile of loose boulders. Instinctively, he had slowed, preparing to stop and expected the wights to do the same, but they were undeterred by the obstacle. They continued forward and Flyn, caught off guard, was dragged until he stumbled and fell, face down. He was down for only a moment, but the next he knew, the wind was screaming in his ears and his beak filled with snow. Getting his hands under him, he crawled until he could gain his feet. Pale sky and thin clouds were now above him, drifts of snow at his feet and Fafnir's daughters ahead, trudging inexorably forward. Flyn cast a look behind, finding a shoulder of snow-clad peak behind. He had left the dwarrow haven as unexpectedly as he had entered and was once again in the frigid wilderness. The land here was higher than when Flyn entered Hriedmar's Hall and he was never out of sight of one peak or another as the wights guided him across ridges between the mountains.

  Since then, the journey had become torturous.

  As Fafnir had warned, the wights never rested, never paused, neither obstacle nor indecision ever impeding their steps. It was as if they had perfect insight of the leagues ahead. They ascended ice-covered switchbacks without care and entered scrubby mountain forests Flyn would have judged impassable, but always emerged after effortlessly finding a suitable path. As the sun vanished behind the surrounding peaks and night swam into the vales, Flyn felt the first fibrous touch of worry enter his gut. As the wights pulled him through the darkness, the full weight of their single-minded nature fell upon him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had convinced himself that they would eventually stop. He knew them to be dead, but his eyes, watching their limbs work for countless hours, were waiting for them to tire. But no matter what exertion he beheld, it was only an illusion. Their bodies did not know fatigue, and never would.

  During that first night, Flyn lost all sense of direction. His coburn eyes were keen, but his ability to detect heat was wasted on his corpse guides. The moonlight was ever being hidden by clouds and the looming bodies of the mountains. In the shifting light, phantom images flew out of the shadows. Once, Flyn's heart surged to his throat as a deadly drop appeared under his next step, panic seizing him as he struggled not to plummet off the ridge. But the fall was unavoidable, for the wights would not allow him to adjust his path, pulling him towards the abyss. Crying out in desperation his foot came down on the black nothingness. He fell, but only because he expected to fall. The void was nothing but a group of dark boulders, seeming to be a yawning chasm against th
e snow. When his foot struck rock, the unexpected resistance upset his balance. Fafnir's daughters dragged him unceremoniously over the boulders until he regained his footing. Again and again, his trammeled sight betrayed him and the night was an interminable gauntlet of spills and false terrors.

  When the sun rose, Flyn breathed a grateful sigh which crescendoed into a whooping cry of triumph.

  “Well, my ladies,” he said to the sisters, “my thanks for an unforgettable evening. Perhaps next time we could simply attend a peasant dance. A harvest festival? Maybe a wedding? Though I would have to warn any lads that fancy a jig with you lot. Your feet never stop. Especially you, North, you saucy wench.”

  To celebrate the end of the night, Flyn ate, slinging his pack of rations around while he walked and selecting a wedge of dense dwarrow cheese and a thick blood sausage. He forced himself to savor the meal, knowing his provisions were limited. The sound of his own chewing mercifully muffled the sisters' singing for a time. Fortified by the food, Flyn took in his surroundings.

  The night's travel had brought them further north and higher in elevation. Presently, the wights led him along a slowly spiraling trail, along the flank of a mountain. At first, Flyn could not imagine who would come into these remote heights often enough to leave such a path, but then his eyes fell upon his guides. All vættir followed the Corpse Eater's call and many had been loosed of late. Flyn wondered how many dwarrow dead marched ahead of him. And how many behind?

  Glancing over his shoulder, he was able to see far down the slope of the mountain and, just to his left, the deep of the valley below. It was then that he remembered his friends, supposedly following at a safe distance. Scanning the landscape below and behind, Flyn looked for signs of movement, but found nothing. Likely they were just a short ways along the curve of his back-trail, hidden behind the mountain. Fafnir may have called a rest during the night, with intentions of making up the distance during the day. Still, Flyn kept a regular vigil for signs of his companions, especially Ulfrun, whose long strides and incredible stamina allowed her to range far ahead of the rest.