Dwellers of the Deep (Harbinger of Doom Volume 4)

by Thater, Glenn

  The wizards' sorcery struck Leviathan squarely and the beast squealed, a sustained high-pitched, grating sound that stung the ears and left them ringing. Its flesh blackened and smoked where the flames smote it, but it did not burn, nor flee; in fact, it barely reacted. Its tentacles continued to thrash about and hunt for men as if each had eyes of its own, though none were visible. One boat snapped in half and sank when a huge tentacle crashed down on it, dumping its crew into the churning waters. Another boat was plucked clean when a gang of tentacles came up en masse and scooped up a half-dozen men and knocked the rest into the water.

  Brackta spoke more mystical words and launched another ensorcelled blast — this one aimed for the beast’s maw. Her latest sorcery was no instant stroke, but a sustained discharge of fiery, white energy that slammed into the beast and sought to burn it to cinders. The magic’s crackling beam pummeled the monster as it thrashed from this side to that, though it would not turn. It would not flee. And it did not fall. Its maw opened wide, and from it gushed a roar that shook even the distant stones of the isle. The men clamped palms to ears in a futile attempt to hold off the skirling sound.

  Brackta’s spell still afire, Ginalli turned to Korrgonn with a look that bespoke futility. “We can’t stop it, my lord,” he said, fear taking hold. “We must flee.”

  “We can’t kill it and we can’t chase it away,” said Ezerhauten. “It’ll take us one by one, boat by boat. We need a diversion. Sacrifice a boat or two and make a run for it. It’s our only chance.”

  “We’ve lost too many men already,” said Korrgonn, his voice steady and calm. “I’ll need the rest for what’s to come. Priest — you must have a ward that can hold it back. Keep it off us for a few more moments and I’ll deal with it myself.”

  “My Lord, you must not risk yourself,” said Ginalli.

  “We’re all at risk. Just do as I commanded.”

  And he did.

  Brackta’s fire blast fizzled out. Her magic left little scar behind, the beast barely wounded, and still full of fight. Weakened from the strain, Brackta sank to her knees. Leviathan bellowed and its tentacles thrashed. Several rocketed toward Korrgonn’s boat. Korrgonn swung his sword and cut the tip from a tentacle that dared venture too close. Ezerhauten sliced one in half as it came in and dodged another, but that one hit the man behind him. It scooped him up screaming, and carried his squirming form to its great maw where it swallowed him whole before his comrades’ eyes.

  As the battle raged on, Ginalli's hands waved before him and he mouthed rare words of power. A white light extended from his outstretched hands and morphed into the shape of a great translucent shield. It grew larger as the priest focused his concentration, all his formidable will bent on the task. The phantasmal shield expanded to nearly half the width of the beast. It was ghostly, insubstantial, and its edges sparked with arcane energies. Ginalli aligned it between Leviathan and their boat, offering whatever protection its mystical energies could afford. “I can’t make it any larger,” said Ginalli through gritted teeth, his face strained. “And it won’t last long. Even now, the power drains me.”

  Par Brackta regained her feet, pale but determined. Before her, extending at first from her hands, then on its own, a rectangular wall of mystical energy coalesced, red and brown in hue, it grew mammoth in size; it brimmed with power, but looked as transparent and insubstantial as Ginalli's shield, which it stood beside, though it was the larger.

  Leviathan lurched forward and crashed headlong into both sorceries. On impact, a great, hollow thump sounded and the mystical shields sparked and shuddered and bent, but held. Strangely, the blow’s momentum was not transferred to the longboat, which moved not at all. Leviathan rebounded as if it had rammed a stone wall. It roared in defiance and anger, and lashed out with dozens of tentacles that flailed in all directions. They battered the magical shields. The echoes of the blows carried on the winds. Each one that struck Ginalli’s shield, sounded as if it impacted metal; those hitting Brackta’s, produced a dull thump, like stone. Other tentacles flailed the water and sent great plumes and scattered spray in all directions, which showered Korrgonn’s boat with putrid water. Both wizards strained to maintain their magics. They poured all their strength into it; their faces masks of pain. They struggled to hold out until Korrgonn made his move. Brackta's legs buckled and she dropped to her knees, but her mystical wall held.

  “We cannot hold,” said Ginalli. His magic mantle sputtered and shrunk even as he spoke. Sweat and blood streamed down his brow and dripped from the end of his nose.

  And then, the son of Azathoth whispered his own forbidden words in a voice too low for any to hear. What eldritch words from which forgotten tongue passed through his lips, what dark promises he made or unholy bargains he struck to call up the shocking magics he did, no one would ever know, thank the gods, for mortal man was never meant to know such things.

  Korrgonn raised his black sword with his right hand and grasped the heart stone with his left. His sword began to glow with numinous energy, a scintillating, fiery red. He plunged it point first, not into the beast, but through the muck and into the water. At its touch, the muck sizzled and steamed as if the steel was lately plucked from Heimdall’s forge.

  The water and the surface muck took on a reddish glow and began to roil, smoke, and bubble. Leviathan rammed the wizards' shields again. Its tentacles thrashed — some arced over or around the mystical barriers and narrowly missed Korrgonn's boat.

  Then did Korrgonn plunge his sword deeper into the water, now to the hilt, and he spoke terrible words of power that his comrades this time did hear — words that haunted them unto the end of their days. Words that dare not be repeated, even here, even now. Korrgonn's spell echoed and reverberated on the wind. His words boomed louder and louder, amplified by the strange topography of the cove, until the very heavens shook.

  Leviathan cowered back. The great beast tried to break away, to flee. From Korrgonn’s left hand or perhaps from the heart stone itself, emerged a ghostly hand that grew huge and menacing, as real, yet as insubstantial as the wizards’ shields. The spectral hand reached out and clamped Leviathan in an iron grip that would not yield; a death grip that would not be sundered.

  Leviathan howled. It was a piercing, high-pitched, pitiful cry that went on and on and varied in tone and pitch. Whether those horrid sounds were naught but the meaningless wails of a dying beast or baleful entreats to some demon of the nether realms was never known, save that whatever prayers it may have shouted went unanswered. Under Korrgonn’s magic, its great form reddened, sizzled, and blistered. Its tentacles flopped and thrashed, and burst afire — combusting from within, not without. Its bulk surged this way and that, but the spectral hand held it back, denying any retreat. The few men still locked in Leviathan’s grasp screamed and burned along with the tentacles that entrapped them. The men in the water shared the same grisly fate. Their flesh burned to cinders, but strangely, their armor, clothing, and equipment remained intact, and slowly disappeared beneath the waves, as did their whited bones. All the while, the water around the boats and for a distance beyond boiled and steamed.

  At last, the beast's great form crashed to the water's surface in a smoking, ashen heap. It released a sound like a deep trumpet’s rumble as it collapsed in on itself. Its cries gone silent, its form now still, save for some few tentacles that flopped about, owing to some residual, reflex energy. Leviathan, who had abided those waters for untold eons slowly slipped beneath the surface for the first time not of its own volition, but in answer to death's beckoning, relentless call.

  With the beast's passing, so went the wizards' mystical shields and Korrgonn's spectral hand. Ginalli fell limp and would have pitched over the longboat’s side save for Ezerhauten's retraining hand that steadied him and lowered him to the deck. How small he looked, thought Frem. How weak, the great man.

  Brackta fell forward against the gunwale and puked over the side, her face gone green, her eyes sunken. Korrgonn sat on
the longboat's bench and held his head in his hands, silent and still, and did not move for a goodly time. His right hand, whence the sorcery sprang, was blackened and charred, though Korrgonn paid it no heed.

  The cove was silent save for the piteous screams of one soldier who had fallen from Leviathan's grasp and landed in Frem's longboat just as Korrgonn's spell had taken hold. Frem and his men looked on in horror as he screamed and writhed about. Much of his flesh had burned off and continued to sizzle and char. His entire head was blackened, his features unrecognizable. One eye was gone and bone showed through his face here and there, though his clothes and his gear were entirely untouched by the sorcery.

  “Throw water on him,” cried Moag, grabbing a bucket and dunking it over the side.

  “It’s boiling, you fool,” shouted Putnam, but some water had already splashed over Moag’s hands and sent him jerking back on his rump.

  “I can’t tell who it is,” whispered Sevare to Frem.

  “Me neither,” said Frem. “I can’t save you, my friend, but I can stop the pain.” Frem pressed his boot to the man’s torso to steady him and positioned his sword over the center of his chest. With all eyes in the fleet on him, and Frem’s face full of anguish, he ran the man through, and ended his suffering.

  All was calm and quiet for a full five heartbeats. Then came an earsplitting roar from behind, from the beach. Dagon of the Deep stood on the strand and bellowed.

  “Oh, boy! All we need,” said Frem.

  “On your oars, men,” shouted Putnam. The men scurried to their positions as fast as they could. Those in the other boats did the same. They rowed hard — their fatigue fallen away for fear of Dagon. After some minutes, they reached the edge of the muck-filled cove and continued rowing in the open sea toward their anchored ship, the going now much easier with no seaweed to hamper them.

  “Why is that thing just standing there looking at us?” said Frem to Sevare, as he pulled an oar as best he could with his one working arm.

  “Who cares,” said Sevare. “As long as it’s not after us.”

  “Maybe he’s afraid of Korrgonn's magic,” said Frem.

  “Or maybe he’s just not hungry anymore,” said Sevare. “Who knows. How's your arm?”

  “Out of the socket,” said Frem, “and throbbing like hell.”

  “You’ve got to get that arm back in place,” said Putnam. “It will just be harder later as it swells up.”

  Frem dropped his oar and turned his shoulder toward Sevare. “Give it a tug for me, will you. Hard — hard as you can. And do it fast — I need to get back on this oar.”

  “I’m no physician,” said Sevare.

  “Just do it.”

  Three hard tugs, which Frem tolerated stoically, and the arm found its place, though Frem still had little use of it. Without missing a beat, Frem grasped his oar with his good hand and set right back to rowing. Then from the corner of his eye, Frem saw something in the water and turned toward it. Not far beyond the edge of the cove, he saw a fish’s skeleton bobbing on the surface. Then he saw another and another, and turned about to get a better look behind them. The other longboats had all put up their oars and the men stared in amazement. For as far as the eye could see in all the directions, countless skeletons of fish of all varieties, great and small, floated and bobbed about the water's surface. “Dead gods,” said Frem. “Korrgonn’s magic did all this?”

  “It looks as if anything alive in the water was fried,” said Sevare. “Their flesh burned or dissolved clean off. Somehow, being in the longboats saved us.”

  Putnam stared at the bonefield. “Never seen or heard tell of anything like this. I wonder how far the dead zone goes.”

  “I hope it's not the whole darned ocean,” said Frem. “We need to keep moving.”

  “On your oars, men,” said Putnam.

  “Do you still doubt him, Frem?” said Sevare as he stared over at Korrgonn, beaming. “Only the son of the lord could do this. And since when do bones float, anyways?”

  “Since we got hired by the League everything's gone upside down," said Frem. "The world don't make no sense anymore."

  "It never made any sense. You just didn't have enough sense to realize it," said Sevare with a smile.

  "I can't argue with that."

  In the distance, a large explosion rocked The White Rose.

  "Oh, boy," said Frem. "Let's move men. Put your backs to it."

  As they grew closer, yells and screams and sounds out of nightmare came from the ship.

  "That's no minor skirmish or squabble," said Putnam. "It's a major battle across the whole main deck, and the bridge as well."

  "We're not going to make it in time," said Sevare.

  "We need to get to The Rose now," shouted Frem. "Give it all you've got, men. Pull! Pull!"

  "If the Rose goes down, we're all dead for sure," said Sevare.

  "She's listing to starboard," said Putnam.

  Another explosion.

  "Oh, no," said Sevare. "Dead gods, it's coming."

  "What?" said Putnam, turning.

  "Dagon," said Sevare. "It's coming after us."

  Dagon waded out into the water, its great strides quickly carrying it far from the beach, its black eyes trained squarely on the fleet. It surely planned to kill them all. There would be no escape from that island. Not for any of them.

  "Damn," said Putnam. "Why couldn't it have just been cannibals?"

  "Shut up and row," said Frem. "Row for your lives." Frem pictured Coriana in his mind's eye and forced his left hand up to grip an oar and bit back the terrible pain in his shoulder. He saw her smile; he heard her laugh. That gave him the strength he needed to ignore the pain and to row like he never had before. "Row for all you hold dear," Frem shouted.

  XIX

  BRIGANDIR

  The Black Falcon's main deck was crowded with men, weapons drawn and battle ready, waiting. Theta was there. So were Ob, Tanch, and nearly all of the expedition’s soldiers and knights, along with most of Slaayde’s crew. Most of them stood watching the main door that led below deck.

  That door shattered to splinters, and a wave of brimstone-scented heat roared across the deck in the shrapnel’s wake. In the gaping portal stood the Brigandir in his demonic form. The soldiers and seamen had never seen or heard of its like. The thing was a monster. Something out of a nightmare.

  Gasps and expletives were spouted all around.

  “By Asgard, what is that?” said Ob under his breath.

  “Fire,” shouted Theta.

  A dozen shafts launched from point-blank range slammed into the Brigandir — neck, chest, belly, and thigh — but all dropped ineffectually to the deck, smoking and broken, the Brigandir’s armor-like hide too hard to penetrate.

  “Thetan,” shouted the Brigandir. Smoke rose from where its feet touched the deck. It turned sideways as he came through the portal, for it was too broad to fit straight on. “Don’t hide behind these puny pawns, coward. Come forward and face the lord’s justice. Your reign of terror ends here; it ends now. Midgaard will be free of you at last!”

  “Take it down,” shouted Ob from somewhere in the throng.

  Without hesitation, men charged from all sides, their eyes bright with bravery, war cries on their lips. Silver-armored, fresh-faced Lomerian soldiers of House Harringgold led the way with sword and shield, their intrepid captain, Seran Harringgold, at the van. Rugged veterans of House Eotrus charged beside them with sword, axe, or hammer. Scattered amongst the soldiers skulked the bravest of Slaayde’s motley crew of cutthroats, wielding cutlass and dagger, knife and hatchet. The Brigandir met them all with a black sword now ablaze with the cold fires of Nifleheim. Its muscles bulged with strength beyond the ken of men. Its long, barbed tail whipped this way and that and stabbed with deadly purpose and precision.

  The epic battle engaged

  all wild and crazed,

  Men staggered wounded and dazed,

  a chaotic melee of blood, sweat, and rage.

&
nbsp; Stab and slash,

  thrust and crash,

  the strength of men ebbing fast,

  their courage and skill the beast would outlast.

  Scream and moan,

  slice and groan,

  a demon roared and men died

  in a bloody red and fiery tide.

  —Fifth Scroll of Cumbria,

  Quatrains 81 through 83

  Neither strength, courage, skill, nor force of numbers could bring the Brigandir down. Its very breath, when it so desired, was fire. It spewed flaming spittle into one man’s face that burned him to the bone in an instant.

  Its merest touch was death as two seamen discovered when its claws scraped over their arms’ bare flesh. For reasons unknown, the creature’s death grip was ineffective through armor, thank the gods. But naked flesh enjoyed no such reprieve. Flames erupted at the points of contact, but did not travel along the skin, burning into flesh as would any terrestrial fire. This hellfire instantly bored into the men’s flesh and traveled inside their bodies in all directions, while leaving their skin, clothing, and gear untouched. They screamed in agony as the hellish flames spread, the flesh of their arms glowing, marking the flame’s progress as it consumed them from within. In moments, they dropped to the deck, the flames utterly destroying them from the inside out. At last their skin blackened, charred, and collapsed in gruesome, ashen heaps.

  The Brigandir’s very body exuded a burning heat unbearable for more than moments to those within arm's reach. Even as it fenced with a dozen men, its barbed tail shot out, as it had several times before, and wrapped about a soldier’s neck. It clamped down like a python, drew the man close, and squeezed the harder with each passing moment. Its sharpened ridges bit deep into the man’s flesh and sent blood spurting. Desperate slashes of sword and axe along the tail’s length did it no harm; the blows merely deflected off its scabrous hide. In moments, the tail sliced through the man’s neck and his head popped off his body amidst a geyser of blood.