“Who has come?” The voice said, and the old crone recognized it. The skeletal figure began to wreath itself in darkness, but the crone knew that Gutcrusher had seen its frailness.
“It is I, Khama Holle.” She said in the ancient tongue. “I am come to free you, Jotnar Hel.”
“Khama Holle.” The voice intoned. “The little weirdling we banished to play in the forest? It is good that you have finally learned your place. Long you were in coming, and you shall be punished for it.” Jotnar Hel had fully assumed his godlike aspect, and his thickly muscled frame glittered darkly like a great sculpted giant of obsidian.
“I have brought akar with me.” Khama Holle replied.
“The akar? Are there still such in the world?” Several female voices muttered flatteries to Jotnar Hel as his four norns assembled themselves in their coffins before coming forth to join him.
“There are many, but they are changed greatly. They do not speak the ancient tongue, and they are not what they were. I have spent many years learning their ways, for they came to the place I was imprisoned and spoke often to each other. I have learned their language and customs, and …” But Jotnar Hel interrupted her.
“Akar are akar, little weirdling.” The norns echoed him, their icy voices calling her weirdling, the mocking name he had given her long ago. “I will take them from you and they will serve me. You will teach them proper speech. Have they been bound?”
“All but one have completed the ritual of binding, Jotnar Hel.” Khama Holle replied truthfully, if not quite honestly.
“You will release them from their binding and give them to me.” Jotnar Hel said. “Show me the one who is unbound.”
“What is he saying?” Gutcrusher demanded suddenly when she gestured toward him.
“He is saying that he is glad you freed him and he will allow you to obey him.”
“Allow me to do what?” Gutcrusher’s brow knotted in confusion, but Jotnar Hel’s voice interrupted them.
“Is this the unbound one?” Jotnar Hel demanded, stepping from his sarcophagi and walking toward Gutcrusher. “Why does he come before me armed like a gladiator? Have you been amusing yourself with arena games?” His voice sounded amused, and the norns laughed.
“I have equipped him from the armory of Araous the Burner.” Khama Holle told Jotnar Hel. “It was all the gear I could find.”
Jotnar Hel’s voice was contemptuous. “Araous the lannister left some of his toys behind, did he? And you have equipped these slaves for the games. Perhaps we will revive the games in this new age, but first we shall have our revenge on the people of Marten. We were long preparing for the great war before we were deceived. I shall equip my akar with a great store of arms that we have here in this city. Make him bend knee and submit himself to me now.”
“What is he saying?” Gutcrusher demanded. “What are you telling him?” Several of the ogres were looking about nervously, for the norns had now come forth from their sarcophagi, tall beautiful women with skin like ice, shimmering white hair and blue and glowing eyes. They were unclothed and they laughed when their master wanted them to.
Khama Holle turned to Gutcrusher. “I am negotiating the price of the Black God’s favor. This is what you wished for, is it not?” Gutcrusher eyed her warily, then nodded. Wolf, Balls and Ironspike stepped up to take position behind their king.
“Find out the price before you agree to anything.” Balls cautioned the king.
“The akar wishes to know what his reward shall be if he submits to your will, Jotnar Hel.” Khama Holle said to the Black God in the ancient tongue.
“Reward?” Jotnar Hel looked at Khama Holle disdainfully. “They are slaves. Their reward is to do their master’s will.”
“I told you that I have studied them for a long time.” The crone replied. “They have changed greatly since the days when they served you. They have learned to survive on their own without us, and they wish to be rewarded should they serve.”
“Did I not create them?” Jotnar Hel demanded. “Do they not belong to me, to do with as I will? Tell this one to bend knee to me and complete the ritual of binding. For their reward they shall have weapons of war such as they have never known. Tell them I shall equip them to slay all of my enemies and subjugate all of this land.”
Khama Holle turned to Gutcrusher. “The Black God demands that you bend knee to him, mighty king. He says that since he created your kind, you belong to him to do with as he will. If you bend knee to him, you will have the favor that you wished for, the privilege of doing his will.”
“He said that?” Gutcrusher said to her in disbelief. “This so-called god who was defeated by Auligs demands that I submit to his will?” The ogre captains looked on with growing disbelief and anger.
“He says that if you submit to him, like a she submits to her mate, he will give you weapons. That is the favor of the Black God.”
“Like a she?” Gutcrusher’s voice was deceptively calm. “He wishes us to submit to him like shes?”
“Yes, he demands that you bend knee before him and serve him like a she.”
Gutcrusher’s rage at these words was unsurpassed by anything in his experience, but he had learned cunning in dealing with enemies. He nodded and looked down, deliberately hiding the fury that he knew was in his eyes. He stepped forward to the Black God, who was waiting expectantly with his arms crossed. Once he stood within a pace of the figure, who was taller than he was and cloaked in eldritch armor that was as shiny and black as obsidian, he lashed out with his blacksteel mace and felt it smash into the Black God’s stomach.
“You dare!” Roared the Black God in surprise and fury, but a pain such as he had never known was in his guts, and the fiery ichor that flowed in his veins spattered about, landing in small flames. He raised his mighty arms, the only weapon he had ever needed, and prepared to smash the insolent akar to the ground. Khama Holle would pay with her life for this, he swore.
But Balls was already moving, having accurately read the mood of his king and foreseen his reaction at being told to submit like a she, and his blacksteel spear flicked out and scored a tremendous wound to the Black God’s left shoulder. Gutcrusher leaped backward, out of the way of the Black God’s arms, while Wolf ripped into the thing’s hip with his deadly gladius. A shower of flaming ichor gouted forth, and Ironspike’s legs were burned even as he struck the Black God with the skull-stick.
“They are bound to you! Command them to stop!” Jotnar Hel roared at the crone, even as he stepped backward to avoid the deadly rain of blows that was falling on him. Balls swept his spear behind the Black God’s knees, tripping him up, and Gutcrusher leaped forward and shattered Jotnar Hel’s left knee with his blacksteel mace. Flames from spattering blood roared all about them, burning the ogres in many places, but their blood was up and it hardly mattered.
The lightning quick attacks of the ogres came too fast and from too many directions for the Black God to defend against them all, but he lashed out with his fist and knocked Wolf sprawling, even as Wolf drew a line in his arm with the gladius, drawing more fiery blood.
The crone smiled grimly. “I did not say they were bound to me, Jotnar Hel.” She pointed at Gutcrusher. “They are bound to him. Meet the king of the akar.”
When Ironspike smashed the skull-stick into the Black God’s lower back, the thing’s concentration wavered, and the illusion of armor that surrounded it flickered and died. He appeared then as he truly was, a withered and skeletal figure dripping blood of fire, but he was still tremendously strong and fast. He reached for Ironspike with his long and sharp fingers and scored the ogre across the shoulder and back, leaving deep cuts like those of a great bear’s claws, and the cuts burned like fire. The attack left him exposed, however, and Gutcrusher smashed his elbow, pulping the joint and rendering his right arm useless.
With his left arm the Black God clawed for Khama Holle while the norns screamed in rage behind him. “You treacherous little whore!” Jotnar Hel screamed and the no
rns repeated, but Wolf was back with his nose broken, and Wolf’s blood was up. He swung the gladius with both hands and all of his strength, severing the arm above the elbow and spraying a fountain of fire across the floor.
“Make me submit like a she?” Gutcrusher roared, striding through the flames like a demon from the third hell. “I will show you who is a she you old bag of bones!” He battered the Black God backward with repeated blows from the spiked mace, and each blow shattered ribs and left flaming tears in the withered and ancient skin, until it seemed the whole front of the Black God was flame. Balls looped his spear beneath the legs of the Black God, preventing it from rising, while Ironspike and Wolf joined Gutcrusher in hammering the thing into the stones of the floor.
“Who is a she now?” Gutcrusher demanded, but there was no answer of course. The Black God was dead, and his essence poured into the cracks of the floor, burning briefly before disappearing altogether. Gutcrusher stamped his feet in the remains of the Black God, and fire crept into his boots and burned his legs a bit. The norns were screaming their hatred and rage, but they knew what blacksteel was now, and they feared it. They used their own small mastery of the realm of seeing to make themselves invisible, and they faded from view.
But Khama Holle also had once been called divine. In ages long past she had been called many things, chief among them the Maiden of Spring, the Mother of Summer and the Crone of Winter. Her mastery of the art of the Seen and Unseen was not surpassed by any creature now alive on this world, and she saw the norns clearly. She put forth her power so that the ogres could see them, too. The norns had been the submissive slaves of the Black God for so long that they did not remember their own strength, nor did they remember how to defend themselves.
Gutcrusher and his captains moved in a tight formation and smashed them one at a time into pools of flaming blood until only one was left. Khama Holle raised her arms and stepped between them and the surviving norn, who was flat against the wall with her arms lifted imploringly. “Please, Khama Holle. Make them stop.”
Khama Holle smiled grimly. “Skulda.” She addressed her in the ancient tongue. “I remember you. You laughed when Jotnar Hel flayed my skin. You mocked when I begged for mercy. You urged him on when he raped me, and you marched with him to the gates when he banished me. Was that not you, Skulda?”
“Forgive me!” Skulda cried. “He made me to do those things.”
“Tell me where he has hidden his armory.” Khama Holle demanded.
“In the deeps of Khal Palace.” Skulda replied quickly, for the ogres were growing restive behind the crone.
“Good. I know where that is. Goodbye Skulda.” The crone replied. Then she stepped out of the way and let the ogres complete their work while Skulda screamed and died.
Gutcrusher approached the crone, and his captains, catching the look in his eye, surrounded her, with their weapons ready and smoke rising from their bodies in many places. “They called you Khama Holle, witch.” The ogre king said.
“Yes. That is my name.” The old crone replied, looking warily at the ogres around her. She knew their blood was still up. She knew also that although she could overcome the minds of one or perhaps even two of them and make them drop their weapons, the remaining two could do her deadly hurt. Gutcrusher saw the fear in her face.
“Tell me, Khama Holle, and do not lie. Did the Black God really say I was to serve him as a she?” His eyes were keen, and his expression unreadable, but his deadly mace was near to her body. She had seen how swiftly he could strike.
Khama Holle’s eyes widened in surprise. He was far more cunning than she had thought. She licked her lips, hesitating. “He did not.” She finally admitted. Gutcrusher grinned and nodded.
“I didn’t think so. You lie like the queen.” The ogre captains broke into smiles when he said this, and Wolf laughed out loud. “Next time you want me to kill a god for you, just ask.” Then the four ogre captains turned their backs on her and began walking, still laughing despite their burns and injuries, toward the outside.
“Wait, mighty king.” Khama Holle said, the terror of the moment having passed. “I thank you for giving me vengeance. There is a reward.”
Gutcrusher turned and looked back at her. “Reward?”
Chapter 70: Mortentia City, Beginning of Leath
“What strange and tragic circumstance hath brought the King to pow’r
And tumult and coincidence in dark and troubled hour
Our enemy our hearts confound to strike in full array
And none to hear sweet mercy’s sound upon the dreadful day
Forsooth was naught but happenstance the duke was standing by
The duchess was in residence when queen and prince did fly
Or p’raps some shaman’s augury brought Cthochi to the quay
Ill-fate and dark malignancy led them there that day
But some will say conspiracy, or murder, or a plot
Some dare to speak of treason, I say treason it was not
And ye who speak so recklessly of crowned king’s obsession
Be still and cease your clamoring or jeopardize secession
Peace we need tranquility of rebellion speaketh not
Nor justice nor nobility, nor arms availeth not
Accept in docile reverence for Maldiver is crowned
Seek not the missing queen and prince, obey and make no sound.”
The words were set to the gentle and mournful strumming of a guitar, and although they cautioned the listener against action, at least in words, they made Kahdin uneasy, dressed as he was in the navy blue of Elderest. The singer, a yellow-haired youth dressed in a somber coat of black with green piping, seemed to be looking pointedly in Kahdin’s direction, and the mention of treason, murder, plot and rebellion seemed emphasized. Still, his liegelord was now the King of Mortentia, however that might have happened, and Kahdin was charged with helping to keep the peace. He was not going to take the singer into custody for sedition based on the words of a song.
If he arrested the man, he would have to say just what about the song was seditious, and he knew he was neither clever enough to remember all of the words nor experienced enough to winnow sedition from a song that literally told the people to obey. But he caught the mood of the crowd around the singer, and it was ugly. He wished that the king would hurry and get him the new royal livery. The colors of Elderest were not much loved in the King’s Town these days.
Of course, he was on the waterfront in the King’s Town, and that could be dangerous enough, even to a man armed with a broadsword as he was, although today it seemed better than most. He looked around at the half-sunken buildings with piers jutting out from what had been their second stories, and he marveled at the garishly dressed crowd. He had not known there were so many Entreddi in all of the world, nor that they were so rich.
This was his first time serving any kind of duty in the King’s Town, and he’d never heard of the ‘Lio’s Harvest Feast’, nor had he heard that the Entreddi made a party of it. He’d spoken to other guardsmen who said they’d never heard of it either, but the Entreddi had purchased a license of such extravagance that it allowed them free run of the harbor, and they were all over the place, banging on tambours, striking at dulcimers, dancing and drinking.
And how they drank! Kahdin had never seen so much beer in one place. The Entreddi must have purchased and tapped every keg in the city, as well as half of the cups and mugs as well, and they allowed the common folk to help themselves. The promise of free beer brought Mortentians from all quarters of the city, and they clustered around Entreddi entertainers, as well as some local folk who had set up impromptu stages on street corners. These were supposed to purchase licenses, but Kahdin suspected that they hadn’t. He wasn’t about to risk a riot to check. The entire waterfront was thronged with drunken revelers, many wearing costumes and a few wearing just about nothing at all. Still, even naked Mortentians couldn’t set fire to the blood like the Entreddi dancers, exotic and beau
tiful women who managed to look more alluring fully clothed (well, half-clothed anyway) than any topless barmaid. It was in the way they moved.
In the harbor a ‘party galley’ drifted about on the dark water, complete with twin banks of drunken rowers. The galley was all of twenty paces long, and covered with paper and plaster sculptures gaily painted and streamers and ribbons of all colors. Kahdin had heard from an incredulous dockworker that the Entreddi had actually purchased the thing, then decorated it in one of the great indoor drydocks, hiding the decorations on it until they presented it to an amazed Mortentian public this morning. For a copper penny you could ride the thing, but Kahdin had heard the gypsies were taking on passengers without even charging them. Two large kegs of brandy sat at the stern of the boat, and the drunk passengers took turns rowing it about just for fun. A small band of musicians on the aft deck sat next to the kegs of brandy, playing lively dancing tunes that carried across the water, adding to the general atmosphere of chaotic festivity.
All of this cacophony was not only to celebrate Lio’s Harvest, but also to celebrate the coronation of the new king, Maldiver. Wherever the Entreddi went they called out ‘Lio save the King’ or ‘long live the King!’ This much of the festival was certainly good in Kahdin’s estimation.
The celebrations in the harbor could not be heard among the estates of the Suzerainty, except perhaps when someone beat a very large drum or when the mob yelled or sang in unison, then a muted remnant of that sound might travel over the palace hill to echo dimly. Once in a while Edo Fahallis heard the slight buzzing of his window as a particularly strong sound caused it to vibrate in its frame. The window was real glass, and nearly clear, an extravagance of his wealthy parents. They wanted little Edo to look out upon the palace and see the grandeur that was the royalty they served. The Fahallis were an ancient and powerful merchant family, a keystone upon which the D’Cadmouth’s great wealth was built, and Edo was the sole male heir. The vibrations did not concern Edo tonight, however, for he was four years old, and there was a monster under his bed.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 93
