The White Towers

by Andy Remic

  Even as he was speaking, Xavier was nodding to a character out of sight, and pulling on thick black leather gloves, the sort of gloves Narnok had seen down at the docks used to handle dangerous snakes and spiders and scorpions. The phial in Xavier’s hands was steaming softly, just a hint, like sweet tea just gone off the boil; but there was nothing sweet in that glass bottle.

  And Narnok transferred his gaze to Xavier. His eyes were fevered, fanatical once more. Sweat beaded his upper lip, which he licked with a quick fish tongue.

  And then he leapt, and was upon Narnok, and the acid was poured into the man’s left eye, and then poured into his right eye, and he was screaming and thrashing as the burning flowed into his face, into his eyes – sweet GODS into his fucking brain – like some molten metal, and burned him all the way down into oblivion and down beyond into his heart and core as Katuna laughed, her laughter pealing and beautiful and cold as the distant stars, as the acid flowed down down into his fucking soul.

  Narnok came awake to a cool breeze. He gave a little gasp, a sharp intake of breath, and looked around quickly. He could see. Sweet Mother of the Seven Sisters, he could still see! His hands came up to his face, and he felt the heavy scar tissue delivered by the razor blade of the dead Xavier. And Narnok groaned, and hung his head, and allowed the pain from the ribs and knife wound to pulse through him.

  “You all right, Big Man?” Trista knelt beside him. It was night. Somewhere out in the city of Zanne, something burned. Narnok could see the reflection of flames in Trista’s eyes and he realised, groggy and disorientated as he was, that they had moved location. Now, there was a lean-to roof above them. Some kind of balcony, but well sheltered. He also realised he was covered with two blankets.

  “They took my eyes,” he said.

  “You’ve still got one good one, mate.”

  “That’s like the finest stallion stud, with only one good ball.”

  “Which means he’d still have one.”

  “Working at half complement, so to speak,” moaned Narnok.

  “I’d rather be half than nothing at all. Bad dream, axeman?”

  “Yeah. Real bad dream.”

  “About the bitch?”

  “About my wife.”

  “That’s what I said.” Trista grinned.

  Narnok pulled himself up a little, and half turned, wincing. “Did you have to stitch me up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. You can do it for me sometime.”

  Narnok considered making a joke about stitching up Trista’s mouth, but thought better of it. She had that mean look in her eye again. “How long have I been out?”

  “Three days.”

  “Days?”

  “You lost a lot of blood. Some elf rat scum got you with a knife.”

  “Yeah. I… remember.”

  He reached up again and touched his heavily scarred face. Trista realised, with a start, that there were tears on Narnok’s cheek. They glinted in the reflection of the distant fire.

  “What’s the matter?” She reached out. Touched his arm.

  “In the dream, I had my face again. In my dream, I had two good eyes. It was before Xavier, and Katuna’s betrayal, and all the rancid horse shit that followed. I was the old Narnok. The full and proper Narnok; the Narnok women actually wanted to sleep with and bear his children.”

  “You are a good man,” she said.

  “Yeah, but would you fuck me? No. I didn’t think so. It gets so lonely, Trista, you know? Do you know how it feels to be utterly and totally alone? Fuck it, it’s not even about the sex. It’s about… companionship. It’s about having a woman who cares for you, who loves you, who is there for you, to tend your wounds and cradle your crying baby face.”

  “I’m here for you,” said Trista, and tears were on her own cheeks.

  “But you don’t love me?”

  “No,” said Trista, grinning. “But if it’s any consolation, I don’t love anybody. I’d as soon put a knife through a man’s throat than take his cock in my mouth. So you’re ahead of the pack, my friend.”

  Narnok took a deep breath, and grinned himself. “Ahead of the pack,” he said. “That’s the place I like to be.” He scratched at his chin, and winced. He’d taken a battering, for sure. “Heard anything from Kiki? Dek? Zast?”

  “No.”

  “No? I thought not.”

  “They’ve abandoned us.”

  “They had no choice, little lady. Like us. Backs to the wall. Feet in the fire.” He lifted himself a little, turning again. He could hear the fire now, for it had spread. “What’s burning down there? I feel like I’ve been out of the game for too long. Damn knife wound.”

  “Over there.” Trista gestured vaguely. “Some buildings. Some trees.” She looked at him. “Shit.”

  “Trees? You mean the twisted black trees we saw growing in courtyards and gardens and that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you see where?”

  “Over by the museum. Between the Gardens of the Winter Moon and the Haven.”

  “You know what that means, don’t you, Trista, my little honey-pot filled with random scorpion stings?”

  “Not really, Narnok. No.”

  “It’s the trees. The trees are the key. These are fucking elf rats, right? They’re linked to trees – elves are linked to trees. According to legend. It’s part of their physiology, whatever the fuck that is. The elf rats are growing their own spirits, their own bonding trunks, or whatever it is they do with them. Damn odd if you ask me. But the point is, somebody else knows this. And they’re burning the trees. Burning the elf rats’ lifeblood. Teaching them a damn bloody lesson.”

  “So we have allies?” said Trista.

  “All we have to do is find them.”

  “And you think they’ll help us escape?”

  “I think they’ll help us fight this scourge!”

  Trista considered this. “That’s what I was afraid of,” she said, words a whisper.

  They had to wait another two days whilst Narnok regained his strength. Trista went on little scouting missions and found water and food, which they ate cold, huddled together for warmth. Out in Zanne, fires still burned. Somebody was on a mission to fuck up the elf rats good.

  Finally, when Narnok felt strong enough, they gathered together their meagre possessions and headed down through the building.

  It was dawn. At ground level, they could see plumes of black smoke rising into the sky. They travelled deserted streets laden with snow, moving slow, keeping to the walls, avoiding the Haven and sticking to the richer, eastern side of town.

  At one point, curiosity overcame Narnok, and he kicked down a door to a narrow, two bedroom terraced house that leaned alarmingly to the left, defying gravity, or so it seemed. Its timbers were ancient and screamed that it was one of the more authentic, original buildings in Zanne. Part of its heritage. Part of its culture, despite the city’s fall from recent grace.

  The house interior was gloomy, filled with a chaos of upturned chests and furniture. There was a smell, and the smell was bad. No. Fucking bad. Narnok wrinkled his nose and moved through the lower floor, coming to a back bedroom.

  Inside the squalid depths, something moved and groaned in a bed of grey, shit-stained sheets.

  “Hello there? Are you well?” said Narnok, feeling the words were redundant; feeling stupid in his urgent sudden need to explore this urban interior. After all, how could something so squalid and shit-stinking possibly be well?

  The figure groaned in its personal bed of pain, and thrashed beneath the sheets. The smell of corruption was excessive. Something large, and jagged, a bit like a scorpion claw, emerged from a ragged hole in the sheets and started to make a cutting motion in Narnok's general direction.

  “I think we should leave,” said Trista, voice ragged and muffled, mouth covered with a torn strip of linen which she'd dampened with her canteen, and held fervently in place lest she catch some t
errible affliction.

  “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”

  They stumbled out into the grey daylight. It had started to snow again, huge tumbling flakes, romantic in another time, another world. The stench of bad, burned wood drifted to them on the breeze. It was choking and vile.

  “This way,” said Narnok, limping ahead.

  Trista glanced back at the corruption and shadows within the house. What happened to you people, she thought, uneasily, idly, shivering as she did so. Then she followed Narnok, her sword drawn and close to, her body tense and ready for combat. She’d never been more ready. Never.

  “Halt!” boomed the deep, bass-heavy voice. What made it more terrifying were the accompanying ripples of bestial growls that joined the words from the gloom of the museum arch; as if the shadowy figure wreathed in darkness commanded an army of slavering monsters ready to charge and leap and tear out throats in their animal hatred. Maybe he did. “Halt!” Take one more step and you will DIE!”

  “A little melodramatic,” muttered Narnok, turning so his injured ribs were to the rear of any prospective combat; protected, so to speak. He lifted his axe. Light from a rack of thick, sputtering candles gleamed iron eyes from the blades, and reflected dancing patterns across the marble tiled floor of the museum interior.

  “We saw your fires,” said Narnok. “We saw you burning the trees of the elf rats. Figured you were out to smash them. We wanted a part of that. Reckoned you might need some help. Obviously, if you don’t need our help, then we’ll fuck off, like.”

  There came a long, contemplative silence. Narnok exchanged low, slow glances with Trista. If this thing went bad, which sometimes these things did, there was going to be yet more violence. And Narnok, despite appearances, was not in the best shape for a fight.

  They waited at the behest of the madman in the shadows, surrounded by his low growls, dogs probably, hopefully, and wondered what the next move would be. Like a game of chess, although without the logic, and with swords and axes as a bright bloody attack. So. Not really like a game of chess at all, then, although Narnok would like to register some element of tactics, somewhere, whether he deserved them or not.

  “You going to speak then, man, or what? We saw you burning the trees. Figured you might like some help against the scourge of the occupying elf rats. If not, that’s fine, mate. We can go toss off to some other psychopath’s nightmare.”

  “Narnok?” Soft words. A confused question. An imagined tilt of the head.

  “Aye, that’s me. Narnok of the Axe. Hero of Desekra Fortress and Splintered Bones, not that it means a flying bucket of horse shit anymore.”

  “Narnok? Narnok?”

  “Yeah yeah, bastard, don’t wear it out. Am I supposed to know you, or something?”

  The figure stepped forward through flickering candlelight. Above him, statues and busts stared down with eyes of reflected flame, severe and uncompromising and condescending. Their disgust at his half-breed looks seeped through Narnok’s bones, and he felt just that little bit crushed. Like a man teaching at a premiere university when he intrinsically knew he had no right to be there, either by virtue of solid working class roots, by virtue of a limited, stilted, narrowed intelligence, or by virtue of achieving his position by cheating his damn way inside.

  Narnok squinted, leaning forward a little.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Oh, you know me all right,” said the figure, voice quite neutral. Narnok gave a shiver, for he could not quite decide whether this man was friend or foe, and the sounds of the growling had increased in pitch and ferocity, as if the man barely controlled a platoon of rabid werewolves on a leash.

  Narnok shivered.

  “So? What’s your name, friend?” said Narnok, unhooking his axe and sliding it into a combat position with infinite ease, but all the time displaying a smile, a fake smile, a smile that had hooked blank-eyed whores, a fake grin that had pacified brain-dead politicians intent on furthering their own money and career. As, indeed, they all were.

  “My name,” said the man, taking several steps forward until the firelight illuminated his narrow, wiry, powerful torso, “is Mola. I think you know me well, Narnok of the Axe, Hero of Desekra’s Latrine, Warrior of His Own Dog-dick Ego.”

  “Indeed I do,” growled Narnok. “I think you owe me a goodly sum of money, by all the gods!”

  “Bollocks! That’s the other way round,” boomed Mola. Lots of growling. The scrabbling of claws on stone.

  “Is that Duke and Duchess? Sarge and Thrasher?”

  “Yes, it is, Narnok of the Axe. And I think they can smell your ripe blood. And fine blood it is, I am sure, when spilt on the rugs and flags of this brooding mausoleum, on account of serious and large debts unpaid.”

  “Well, Mola of the Dogs, I can’t say I’m overly fond of your fucking mangy, flea-bitten mutts, so if you want to let them loose, by the gods, we’ll see how their fangs fare against my sharpened axe blades.” His words echoed from high vaulted marble ceilings. His words reverberated from stone alcoves, and statues, and plinths containing scenes of the Great Depression. Ancient kings and gods and whores stared down at him, stony-eyed, uncaring, merciless.

  “Think I might just do that,” said Mola, and there came a sound of scraping leather on leather. “After all. You were the bastard who let me down.”

  “Ha! Don’t remember that!” snapped Narnok. “Remember you sticking it up my arse plenty, though.” He smiled a long, low, lizard smile. “Lots and lots. Especially at Skell Docks when we played the dice.”

  “Let’s sort it, then, axeman.”

  “As you wish.”

  “You're really going to fight him over an unpaid debt?” hissed Trista in disbelief.

  “Aye? What’s the problem with that?”

  There came a snap of leather, and a frantic snarling and scrabbling of claws on stone. From the gloom, from the horror show, came four terrifying beasts; each was a huge creature, much bigger than a dog had any right to be and stacked with heavy ridges of muscle. Mola’s hounds were vicious, feral and powerful beyond the vision of any normal, canine animal. Like wolves, thought Narnok, with a bitter smile. “Wild, rabid, untrained wolves…”

  “I’m with you,” snapped Trista, narrow blade gleaming, protecting Narnok’s weakened side.

  “That’s okay,” said Narnok, slipping into a light-headed, almost surreal otherworld of impending combat – as the beasts charged at him, snarling and drooling.

  Because he knew; knew he had to do it.

  He had to kill Mola’s dogs. Then kill Mola.

  Then find the force behind the enemy in Zanne.

  And kill them, as well.

  Kill Mola…

  Once, he was your best friend…

  Narnok’s face went hard. Harder than stone. Harder than granite. Slammed shut like a portcullis when the enemy breached the bridge.

  “So be it,” he rumbled, lifting his axe to meet the charge.

  GAME OF SOULS

  Kiki, Dek and Zastarte pounded down black brick steps, splashed into the sewage and ran on through the darkness. Elf rats pursued them into the gloom, and as the Iron Wolves came to a sharp bend they suddenly waited, whirling about, weapons at the ready. The elf rats came at them in the near total blackness, like monsters from some child’s horror story painted by insane artists high on the honey-leaf. Suddenly, Kiki and Dek leapt to the attack, swords blurring, cutting through flesh with thumps like a butcher cleaving chunks of beef. Blood spattered up the brick walls. Droplets rained down in sewage. Screams echoed from bricks, cutting back and forth, reverberating squeals more animal than human. With savagery and no mercy, Dek and Kiki waded forward, no longer appearing human, their faces seeming to shimmer as Kiki reached down, into the bricks of the ancient tunnel, and felt the energy there, felt the mana, and her twin heart beat faster, pumping blood and energy around her veins. Their faces seemed to lengthen, shimmering in a gloomy silvery half-light; lengthened, into muzzles…

  A
nd they were fighting with blades, but now with slashing claws, and the elf rats fell back dismayed, their distorted faces with tree-like bulges and bark displacements twisted even more into the grotesque of the deviated elf rat. Suddenly, Dek howled a howl so feral, so savage, it tore through the sewer tunnels and broke the morale of the charging elf rats. They turned as one unit and fled back down through the sewage, boots and claws splashing.

  Lights flickered from somewhere high above; some access shaft, some kind of methane release pipe. It flickered on Kiki and Dek and they lowered their faces, which were blurring, shifting, and looked nothing more than perfectly…

  human.

  “Let’s go,” growled Dek in a voice so low it could have almost been torn from the throat of a wolf.

  They ran, despite their injuries, despite their fatigue and battle cramps. They fled back down the sewers, aware that at any moment hundreds more elf rats could flood in and overwhelm them. They were beaten back, they knew. And even worse, they’d lost Narnok and Trista back there; and the thought hung heavy in their hearts, and in their souls.

  Dawn had broken when they emerged from the evil gash in the earth, and they stood breathing deeply on a plain of rolling hills, a wicked wind slashing across them, biting like pike teeth. They looked at each other, each marked with congealed blood and the flowers of recent bruises, and each bearing a weariness that went bone deep.

  “Come on,” said Kiki, coughing out exhaustion like a rock.

  “Where the hell to?” snapped Zastarte, whirling on her, his blade up, gore covered, battered, but segments still gleaming. “We’ve got to go back. We have to find another way in. We have to rescue Trista… and Narnok.”

  “They don’t need no rescuing, lad,” said Dek, placing a hand on Zastarte’s shoulder.

  “And who made you our fucking Captain?” snarled Zastarte in the dull grey light.

  “I understand your pain,” said Dek. “You have… feelings, for Trista. You’re worried about her. But we need to… to regroup. To rest. To think. To plan.”