Geas of the Black Axe (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 2)

by D. P. Prior

  Nameless let out a booming laugh. He’d not expected that. Albert was full of surprises, no doubt all of them as poisonous as the gas he’d sent through the window.

  The guard’s sword clanged to the cobbles. He was arched back at an unnatural angle, arms thrashing, legs twitching. Albert was grinning like a baresark with a pitcher of mead. A couple more shakes and shudders, and the guard flopped to the ground.

  “Credit where credit’s due, eh, Shadrak?” Albert said, straightening up and picking bits of flesh from the wire. “Chef Dougan might have been a terrible cook, but his cheese-cutter works a treat.” He stuffed it in his jacket pocket and adjusted his rumpled collar.

  “Good job, Albert,” Shadrak said. “That all of them?”

  “Unless there’s a change of guard on the way.”

  “There was,” Shadrak said, slipping the razor star back in his baldric and wiping his dagger clean on his cloak. “But not anymore. Any sign of a key?”

  Albert rifled through the guard’s pockets, checked his belt, and came up shrugging. “It’s all yours, then.” He gestured ostentatiously toward the door.

  Shadrak slipped out his tool-pack and unrolled it. He put a hook pick between his teeth and took out a torsion wrench. The lock was at eye-level for him; anyone else would have had to bend down. Without looking, he wagged his fingers over his shoulder. “Light,” he hissed. “Bring me some light.”

  Nameless slid from the barrel and grabbed one of the workmen’s lanterns. He ambled over to stand behind Shadrak and illuminate the lock.

  “What you need is a hammer and chisel,” he said, slinging the tankard over his shoulder, and feeling the loss of ale like it was family. “Lock like this isn’t sturdy, not like the ones in Arx Gravis. One good whack—”

  “What I need is peace and quiet,” Shadrak said. “Do I tell you how to lop heads off with that axe of yours?”

  Nameless started to object that he hadn’t lopped off any heads, but he had. More than he cared to remember. Shame prickled his face as images of dwarven heads on spears sprang unbidden to mind. Thank shog for the helm, else Shadrak or Albert might have noticed.

  Shadrak placed the torsion wrench in the lower part of the keyhole and applied torque to the cylinder, turning it the merest fraction of an inch. Taking the pick from his teeth, he poked it into the upper part of the keyhole and felt around.

  “My way’s quicker,” Nameless said.

  Shadrak turned the wrench. The lock clicked, and he pushed with his shoulder—but the door didn’t budge.

  “Crap,” he muttered, and then, “Shogging, scutting bollocks.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me…” Albert said.

  “Yep,” Shadrak said, stepping back from the door and giving it a kick. “Barred from the shogging inside.”

  “Well, that’s… sensible, I suppose,” Nameless said.

  “This is why I don’t like rushing,” Shadrak said. “Everything needs to be planned out in advance.”

  “Now you sound like Baldilocks,” Nameless said. “But I don’t see it doing him much good, do you?”

  “Here,” Albert said, removing the pick and wrench from the lock and passing them back to Shadrak. “Can’t say we didn’t try.”

  “Stand back,” Nameless said. He handed Albert the lantern then hefted his axe. “I’ll have a crack at it.”

  “No,” Shadrak said. “We’ll use this.”

  He took a glass globe from his pouch. “Last one,” he muttered.

  He moved back, gesturing for the others to follow. He gave the globe a good shake, then threw it at the door.

  There was a a brilliant flash, a concussive boom, and Nameless was flung onto his back. Sulfurous fumes filled the great helm and made him cough.

  “That’ll do it, laddie,” he said, kicking his legs in the air.

  “Well, no one would have heard that,” Albert said in a voice dripping with sarcasm. He made a show of dusting himself down as he stood.

  Shadrak rolled to his feet. “We need to move. Fast.”

  Nameless grabbed his axe and used it to push himself upright.

  Black smoke billowed away on the wind as Shadrak led them through the wreckage of the doorway.

  There was a door with a grille opposite, and off to one side there was a heavy wooden chest. Two guards were slumped over a table, greenish drool oozing from their mouths.

  Albert lifted one’s head and used his thumb to raise an eyelid, then let the head drop with a thud onto the table.

  “Shader,” Shadrak said, starting toward the cell door.

  “Oh, he’ll be fine. I dare say only a trickle made it through to the cell. Here.” Albert unclipped some keys from a guard’s belt and flung them to Shadrak.

  Shadrak rattled through them till he found the one that fit the lock. There was a healthy clunk as he turned it, and he pushed the door open.

  Shader was face down on the floor. His hair was matted and caked with filth, and his surcoat was a shredded mess, soaked in red. A pair of bunks was the only furniture in the whitewashed room. Bloodstained sheets draped down from the top one, and on the bottom lay a scrawny corpse with a face so bruised and bloodied it didn’t seem human.

  Nameless pushed through the doorway and crossed to the bunks. He knelt beside Shader and turned him onto his back. The knight had taken one shog of a pummeling, by the looks of him: split lip, puffy black eyes, streaks of dried blood from dozens of cuts.

  “He’s breathing,” Albert said from over Nameless’s shoulder.

  “Aye, laddie, but look at the state of him. Game to Sektis Gandaw, I’d say.”

  “Help me,” Shader mumbled from the floor. “Help me up.”

  Albert looked at Nameless and stuck out his bottom lip. Together, they supported Shader as he stood, coughing and wincing, clutching his side.

  “Where’s you’re gear?” Shadrak said.

  Shader looked at him through slitted eyes. He shrugged, and then lurched toward the bunk-bed.

  “Dead,” Shadrak said.

  Nameless pivoted so he could see the open door through the eye-slit. Someone would have heard that blast.

  With agonized slowness, Shader lowered himself to one knee beside the bed. Grunting, he set the other knee down, too, and bowed his head. In spite of his injuries—and they looked severe—he was tight as a spring, and tension rolled off him in murderous waves.

  “Ain’t like you knew him,” Shadrak said.

  Albert gave a delicate cough and nodded that they should go. He crossed to the doorway and peered out across the guards’ room they’d entered by.

  Nameless put a hand on Shader’s shoulder. “Laddie? Laddie, we need to get you out of here.”

  Shader pulled a bloodstained sheet over the corpse’s face.

  “They tortured him, Nameless. His name was Tovin. He was one of those people handing out slips of paper we saw when we arrived. You know what they were? Invitations to secret prayer meetings. He was a Wayist, Nameless. Like Thumil back at Arx Gravis.”

  “Thumil? He read that weird old book, but I wouldn’t have said—”

  “The same book they use. He showed me it before they shut me in that cell with you. The same scriptures. I was starting to learn from Tovin. Their holy book, their Liber Via, is an older, purer form of my Templum’s Liber.”

  “But they killed him,” Nameless said.

  “They were softening him up for execution. But he was too frail, and they went too far.”

  “And they worked you over as well,” Albert said. “Did a good job of it, too.”

  Shader’s eyes hardened. Where they were usually blue, they had darkened to slate-gray. He pulled himself up using the bed-frame, took a lurching step, and staggered as his leading knee buckled. Nameless caught him by the elbow and walked with him into the guards’ room.

  Shader snapped his head round to glare at the chest. He pulled free from Nameless and tottered toward it.

  “Locked,” he muttered.

  “Here.” Shad
rak threw him the keys.

  Albert pressed himself against the wall beside the wreckage of the main door and glanced outside. “Time to go, darlings.”

  “How many?” Shadrak asked, rushing to the other side of the entrance to see for himself.

  “Three,” Albert said. “But there’s activity further down the street.”

  Shader got the chest open. He slipped his coat on, buckled his sword belt, and tugged his hat down low over his face. He adjusted his scabbard so it sat behind his hip.

  Nameless risked a peek outside.

  Two kilted soldiers in bronze breastplates were examining the unconscious workmen. From out of sight, the third cried, “Guard’s dead. Someone slit his shogging throat.”

  Albert shrugged. “Technically, he was strangled. Although, to give them their due, the cheese-cutter did make rather a mess of his throat.”

  Behind them, a groan sounded from one of the guards slumped over the table.

  “You didn’t kill them?” Shadrak said.

  Albert frowned. “Thought I did. Must have misjudged the dose.”

  Then Shadrak said, “Heads up.”

  The two soldiers examining the workmen started straight toward the doorway.

  The rasp of a sword being drawn made Nameless look behind. He tried to call out “No!’ but he was too stunned to speak.

  Shader rammed his gladius through a stirring guard’s back. The man spasmed, gurgled, and stilled.

  A soldier stepped though the debris of the door. Albert slipped out behind him and looped his cheese-cutter around the man’s neck. As the second soldier charged to his aid, Shadrak spun away from the wall and flung two razor stars in swift succession. One took the soldier in the eye, the other in the throat. Shadrak closed in and finished him off with a dagger through the heart, which he made a point of twisting.

  Albert’s soldier slumped to his knees, flailing weakly at the garrote. Albert gave a final tug, then flung the body to the floor.

  Nameless watched as the third soldier fled toward the basilica.

  “Best get going,” he said.

  Shader, though, was standing over the other unconscious guard. He took a jug of water from the table and tipped it over the man’s head. The guard spluttered and came awake. Shader grabbed him by the hair and exposed his throat.

  “No!” Nameless cried as he came back across the room. He grabbed Shader’s sword arm.

  “I won’t allow it, laddie. Won’t let you do what I did.”

  With a flash of movement, Shader snatched the gladius with his other hand and hacked down at the great helm. Nameless smacked it aside with his axe-haft and slammed the flat into Shader’s shoulder, spinning him from his feet.

  Shader hit the floor, rolled, and came up slashing for Nameless’s guts. Nameless turned the sword aside with a blistering block, and then smacked Shader between the eyes with the axe butt. The knight went down hard, hit the back of his head on the flagstones. The gladius skittered away across the room. He blinked up at Nameless standing astride him, axe slung carelessly over his shoulder.

  Shader rubbed his forehead. Already a knot was forming.

  “You remember?” Shader said. He raised his hands to look at the palms. They were raw and weeping, as if he’d held them to a naked flame.

  “Aye, laddie, I remember. Not everything, but more than I’d like.”

  There was a blur of movement, a squeal and a gasp, and the guard Shader had been about to kill crumpled to the floor.

  “If you’re gonna do a thing,” Shadrak said, crouching to wipe his dagger on the guard’s britches, “at least finish the shogging job.”

  Shader shook his head, tried to find the right words. He gaped at the guard he’d stabbed in the back, as if he were emerging from a nightmare.

  Nameless knew exactly what that felt like.

  Had it been the sword that had enraged Shader? That was certainly what had happened with the black axe. But Nameless had felt that weapon’s malice when he’d first seen it, before it he’d grasped it and the world had turned upside down. He’d felt no such revulsion for the Sword of the Archon. Could Shader’s bloodlust have been a natural consequence of being locked up and tortured? Of seeing the Wayist, Tovin, die at the hands of the guards?

  That was something he could understand. If it had been him, and if Tovin had been a friend, like Thumil or Cordy, he’d have likely done the same. But Shader? A man who was more priest than warrior? It felt wrong. And it reeked of Aristodeus. What had the philosopher done to mold a seven-year old boy into such a contradiction?

  “I don’t want to hurry you or anything,” Albert called from the doorway. “But there’s a lot of activity over by the basilica.”

  A horn blasted from outside. Orders were barked. For a few moments, there was a chaos of hollers, clatters, clangs, the crunch of boots.

  To Shadrak, Nameless said, “You three go. I’ll slow them down.” Then to Shader, “Come on, laddie, let’s get you back. No sense in anymore killing.”

  Shader stooped to pick up the gladius. “Back whe—Ouch!” He recoiled, sucking at his fingers, as if he’d touched a boiling pan.

  He looked at Nameless, horror passing across his eyes. “What have I done?” he asked. “Oh, Nous, what have I—?”

  “Now, laddie!”

  Half in a daze, Shader withdrew his hand inside his coat sleeve and used that to pick up the gladius. As he re-sheathed the sword, Nameless bustled him toward the entrance.

  Shadrak grabbed one of the knight’s arms, and Albert the other.

  It hadn’t been boots he’d heard, Nameless realized, as a platoon of soldiers in bronze helms and cuirasses rounded the corner from the basilica. They were sandals. Rectangle shields were formed up in a wall six abreast and four deep. Short stabbing swords poked between the gaps.

  The four of them emerged from the doorway together, but as Albert and Shadrak half-dragged Shader toward the narrow alleyway they’d first approached the jail by, Nameless strode straight toward the shield wall.

  It was impressive, how quickly the soldiers had responded, and the discipline would have made the Red Cloaks look sloppy.

  With a roar of “Kunaga!” he raised his axe overhead and charged. It was the cry shouted by the crowds at the circle fights: the name of the legendary baresark hero.

  The soldiers faltered. They hadn’t expected this. Faster and faster his legs pumped, until he came within a few strides of the front rank. Shields were braced to meet the impact. Shortswords glinted hungrily.

  And Nameless veered away in a wide loop back toward the jail.

  Of Albert, Shadrak, and Shader, there was no sign. They must have made it into the alley.

  A moment’s hesitation, and then a cry went up, and the phalanx surged toward him.

  As he’d hoped it would.

  Suddenly, the soldiers’ discipline wasn’t quite so perfect. Gaps opened between shields as they struggled to match each other’s pace, and when he doubled back and slammed into them, none of them saw it coming.

  The clangor of steel on steel broke like a thunderstorm. The shield wall buckled, and Nameless was in among them shoving and pushing, using the flat of the axe like a club.

  Soldiers fell into one another in a panic of chaos.

  And then Nameless was back out and pelting toward the alley.

  As he made the entrance, some inner sense sent prickles of ice along his spine. He looked up at the roof of the basilica.

  There was a dark shape close to the edge. He could have sworn it was the same thing that been watching him outside the diner, and likely the same creature that had attacked Shadrak. It was vaguely manlike, only sleek, black, and featureless.

  A thud and a clang rocked his head back and spun him round. A crossbow bolt ricocheted from the helm and clattered away across the ground.

  When he angled another look at the rooftop, the creature was gone.

  A second bolt glanced off Nameless’s hauberk. It had come from a top story window. What
did they expect? Crossbows lacked the range, and against dwarven mail, they were worse than useless.

  Sandaled feet scuffed toward him, and Nameless whirled to confront the advancing soldiers.

  They fanned out in a semicircle around him.,

  Nameless held up a hand to stall them.

  “Now listen, laddies,” he said. “I’m going to say this only once.”

  Silence.

  Hard eyes glittered. As one, they started to close in.

  Nameless suddenly tilted the great helm to look up at the sky. “Look out!” he cried. “The suns are falling!”

  The soldiers all looked up, and Nameless legged it down the alley.

  One second, two, and then there were sounds of pursuit.

  But it wasn’t just a straight alley; it was a warren of passages between buildings, a labyrinth of byways filled with rats and refuse. Losing the soldiers was going to be easy; getting himself lost, easier still.

  He barged through a gate into a courtyard garden, entered a house by way of the back door, walked to the front as if he owned the place, even waving a greeting to the startled residents, and then he was out onto a main street.

  Soldiers were gathering a way off to the right, so he hugged the walls of buildings, then made a dash for an alley on the opposite side of the street. Without pause, he strode ahead, taking random turns into adjoining passages until he no longer had any idea if he was heading back the way he’d come.

  But one thing was certain: there were no more sounds of pursuit. All he heard was yelled orders off in the distance, the peep of a whistle, the blast of a horn. They hadn’t given up, by any measure; but they were moving in the wrong direction.

  At an amble now, he emerged from the narrow lanes onto a cobbled street and found himself staring up at a sign depicting a naked woman with a fish’s tail. Above her head was the name of the establishment, painted in red: The Mermaid.

  Nameless slipped inside the doorway and immediately relaxed. It was the scent of hops that did it, the aroma of pipe tobacco. It was a tavern, and more than that, it was open this early in the day.

  “Breakfast?” a crone said from behind the bar.

  The scattering of punters gave him uneasy looks, and then he remembered the helm.