“Get in here, manling, sharpish!”
Johan staggered forwards, tentatively entering a chamber where the air was crisp and sweet, and the sound of soft breathing resonated peacefully. As his eyes grew accustomed to the glare, Johan gasped in astonishment. They were in a low roofed, circular chamber at least thirty feet in diameter. The walls were bright white, and radiated the light which had assailed them.
This was not what had caused Johan to gasp. In a circle around the walls of the cavern there was a ring of stone slabs, perhaps twenty in all. On each, bedecked in the finery of princes, was an elf warrior of such beauty and nobility that it was almost painful to look upon them. They slept, and theirs was the soft breathing which filled the air. Each was in full war gear, each held an elaborately styled sword to his chest. Each looked to be a king.
“Ancient elf lords, livery of Tiranoc, the sunken kingdom,” Jiriki spoke softly, his voice tinged with awe.
But even this was not what had caused Johan to gasp. At the centre of the chamber, surrounded by the sleeping elf lords, was a plain yet elegant plinth, elf and dwarf runes were inscribed in its surfaces, the spidery grandeur of the elven sigils contrasting with the powerful majesty of the dwarf work.
Atop the plinth sat a finger. A black, wizened finger. A wrinkled, mostly decayed, scabrous thing of great antiquity. Despite its obvious age, Johan was under no illusions that this was what these princely lords were here to protect.
Grimcrag looked over at Johan and laughed. “Don’t be taken in, boy, one false move and these charming lads will be revealed in their true shape. Vampires, I wouldn’t wonder. Daemons even. Don’t touch ’em.”
Johan paused; doubt assailed him. Then, with trembling steps, he made for the central dais. Jiriki was already there. The elf stood by the plinth, reading the inscriptions as best he could. “These are beyond me, but they are probably powerful runes of protection akin to those on the doorway.”
“Vot Treasure?” Ever down to earth, the barbarian was scouting the chamber, looking for secret compartments where the great treasure trove might be found. “Nothink here. Not vun think.”
The dwarf looked around and sniffed the air, shaking his head in evident disgust. “Good point, meathead. We’ve been done!”
“Never mind that now,” whispered Johan. “Let’s get the Finger and get out of here—we can sort out payment later, when we get back.” Once more, he was sure that something awful was about to happen. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
They converged on the central dais. The Reaver’s sword weaved, testing the air, and his eyes darted nervously about the chamber. Grimcrag stood close by, legs apart for balance, his axe held firmly in both hands. Jiriki reached out for the finger—as he touched it, the breathing of the sleepers faltered in its regular rhythm.
“Leave it, Jiriki!” Johan screeched. “Remember the instructions: the simulacrum!”
The elf recoiled from the finger as if struck. He nodded to Johan, eyes wide. Grimcrag guffawed, a nervous cough of a laugh.
Johan carefully unwrapped the simulacrum from his pack. It looked little like the blackened stump on the plinth, but the wizard had assured them that it held magic properties enough to contain the guardians for a while at least. Johan reached carefully with his left hand for the aged finger, his right simultaneously manoeuvring the simulacrum into place. As he grasped the finger, a shudder went through the sleepers. Quick though Johan was to remove the artefact, one of the lords abruptly awoke, sitting upright and reaching for his sword.
“WHO DARES—” he began, but his voice was cut short as Grimcrag’s axe removed his noble head from his elegant body. Jiriki winced. Johan placed the simulacrum on the dais. The sleepers resumed their slumber, although now their breathing was disturbed, and they fidgeted restlessly in their sleep, as if in the throes of nightmares.
“Goddit, ja?” Keanu asked.
Johan nodded.
“Let’s go,” growled Grimcrag.
They made for the door, half expecting a hideous trap to be sprung as they left. Jiriki paused by the defiled slab, his forehead furrowed by lines of uncertainty.
“Come on, Jiriki, it was him or us,” Grimcrag said softly from the doorway. “If I’m wrong, at least it’s not you ’as been kin-slaying, and I’ll owe someone due reparation.”
Hesitantly Jiriki joined them outside the chamber. “We’re all in this together, my friend. Let’s hope we’re right.”
In the passageway, Keanu had a torch re-lit, and the warriors carefully closed the stone door behind them, shutting out the white light and plunging themselves into gloom once again. Johan handed the magical talisman to Jiriki, who passed it around the doorway, realigning the broken runes once more.
“There you are, see!” Grimcrag exclaimed. “That wizard knows what he’s up to all right—all bar the treasure, that is…” His gruff voice trailed off, and he spat on the floor.
“Somvun get da Treasure first?” Keanu suggested, striding off along the corridor with lantern held high.
“Mebbe so,” grunted the dwarf. “And wait for us!” Johan and the grizzled dwarf followed the barbarian.
Jiriki joined them a moment later, a puzzled frown still on his face. “The problem is, if we think for a moment, that the chamber had lain undisturbed for ages. We found it as it was sealed, runes unbroken. No one has been there before us.”
“And that means—” Johan added after the required moment’s thought.
“No treasure!” Grimcrag scowled even more ferociously than usual. “As I thought, that wizard has some explaining to do once he’s got ’is precious Finger back!”
Dispirited, the adventurers made their way to the surface and the long trek back to civilisation. It seemed that the quest was, at least from their own point of view, a failure.
“At least ve’re gettink da Finga,” Keanu commented, attempting a glimmer of cheer as they trudged out of the broken down cave entrance. “Und ve can see da Daylicht vunce more.”
Grimcrag looked around the desolate hillside. It was starting to snow again. “What good’s that to us, eh? Daylight won’t keep us warm, nor pay our expenses neither.”
Jiriki laughed. The situation had tickled his elvish humour. “And all for a mummified bit of man-flesh that is worth nothing to anyone except our misguided patron. We can’t even sell it to anyone else.”
Grimcrag snorted and stomped off into the snow, followed by the barbarian, now wrapped tightly in his bearskin. The dwarf’s gruff voice floated back towards the elf, who was stowing his bow to avoid the string being ruined by the damp air. “Not funny. Not funny at all!”
Bursting into a bright and spirit-raising melody, the elf ran lightly after his companions, leaving Johan shivering in the entrance. A plan was growing in Anstein’s mind, a plan so devious that it might just work.
“Hold on you lot! Hold on!” he shouted, rushing off down the hillside after the vanishing figures. In a few minutes he caught them, waiting for him in the lee of a large boulder which offered a little shelter from the elements.
“Make it quick, lad,” Grimcrag said through gritted teeth.
“Yes, yes, but listen to this idea,” Johan began, hopping from foot to foot.
“Ideas, pah!” spat Keanu, his breath steaming in the cold. He stabbed Johan in the chest with an iron hard finger. “Dis hole grosses Dizazta ist ’coz of your verdamten Planen.” Johan had noticed before that the barbarian’s accent thickened to near-incomprehensibility when he got angry.
Even Jiriki shook his head wearily. “I think you’ve got us in enough of a mess already with your pipe-dreams, lad. Leave it alone, eh?”
As the three Marauders turned to go, Johan jumped in front of them, eyes gleaming.
“Listen, you miserable beggars. We’ve got the Finger, right?”
“Ja, so vot?”
“The Vizard, sorry, the wizard wants it, right?”
“Yeses, go on…” Grimcrag was interested. He could see the glimmerings of a pla
n happening, a plan which might involve some gold.
Johan seized his chance and blurted out the whole scheme. “We get old Gerry the butcher to make us a finger just like the real one. After all, the wizard has never seen it.” Johan counted the points off on his fingers. “Then we take the real finger and bury it somewhere secret nearby.” Jiriki was nodding in approval. Johan held up another finger. “We take the fake finger to the wizard and try and get an explanation from him. He won’t let us in the tower if we don’t have something to wave at him.”
“Klewa lad. Be Kontinuing.”
“Well, as I see it, once we’re in the tower, he’ll either spin us a yarn, or offer us some gold by way of apology. If we get some treasure, we go back and get the real finger for him. Otherwise, we tell him he’s got a fake and sell him the real one. Simple! We can’t lose!” Pleased with himself, Johan swelled up with pride.
The others, standing by the boulder on the desolate hillside, assessed the plan.
“Butcher, ja?”
“A simulacrum of a simulacrum, I like that.”
“Treasure and gold after all!”
“Well?” enquired Johan after a minute or so. “What do you think?”
Grimcrag grabbed him by the shoulders, staring sternly into Johan’s eyes. The dwarf’s black eyes gleamed ferociously. Johan thought perhaps now something awful was going to happen after all. The others crowded round, looking over Grimcrag’s shoulders to see what was going on. Johan felt his back meet the cold stone of the boulder. He gulped.
“Manling,” Grimcrag began, speaking slowly and with deliberation. “Of all your harebrained schemes…” He stopped, and Johan cringed inwardly at what was to follow. “This… is the best so far!” With a whoop of joy, Grimcrag threw his helmet into the air, caught it again and set off down the hillside at the nearest he was ever going to get to a sprightly jog.
Jiriki grinned. “This is going to work, lad—he’s even singing his favourite song!” Punching Johan cheerfully in the chest, the elf set off after the dwarf.
“What song?” Johan shouted, wincing from the blow.
“Komst, lad, let’s go.” The Barbarian sprang catlike down the hillside.
Still smirking with satisfaction, Johan began picking his way down the treacherous slope. Even though he was concentrating hard on not falling over, his ears caught the unmistakable sound of the Marauders in full song as they descended the hill. After a moment’s hesitation, Johan threw caution to the wind. Well, no one from the Empire was around to hear him.
“Gold gold gold gold!
Gold gold gold gold!
Wonderful gold!
Delectable gold…”
It was all going to be all right after all. Probably.
The wizard was pleased to see them, skipping excitedly as he undid the myriad locks and bolts to his tower.
“You have it, you have it?” he fussed, leading them by torch light up the steps. “Of course you have, I saw it from the window.” The wizard turned around on the steps and reached out a bony hand. Johan thought he saw a rather greedy glint in the eyes which peered out from the shadows of the heavy cowl. “I’ll carry it from here on now, shall I?”
His eyes were mesmerising, and Johan felt his hand reaching unintentionally into his back pack. “You can carry it now,” he intoned dully. Johan was barged aside by a sturdy armoured figure, who broke the spell with a characteristically gruff outburst.
“Not till the tower, that was the deal. We deliver it to the top of the tower. Always does things to the letter, we does. We’ve got honour!” Grimcrag’s voice was laden with sarcasm, but if the wizard noticed he did a good job of not showing it, running off cheerfully up the steps.
“Very well, my friends. Hurry along, hurry along, I have a kettle on for a nice hot drink.”
“Hrrumph!” Grimcrag added, but they followed the excited sorcerer up to his den nonetheless. Five minutes later and they were sitting around his table, glasses of a hot, mead-like drink steaming before them. None of them touched a drop.
“Come along now,” the wizard chided, rubbing his hands together gleefully. “Drink up, we have much to celebrate!”
Johan smiled glassily and made to take up his glass, but the Reaver stopped him with an iron hard forearm. “Njet drinking!”
“We always keep clear heads when concluding business. Nothing personal, you understand.” Jiriki’s silky steel voice decided the issue.
“Of course. You are… professionals.”
Shaking his head to clear what felt like a thick fog, Johan thought he caught the edge of a snarl in the wizard’s voice. The Marauders made no move. There was a heavy silence.
“Well?” the wizard exclaimed after a moment, and there was no mistaking the impatience in his tone now. “Where is it?”
Grimcrag turned to Johan and winked. He was enjoying this immensely, although the canny dwarf had noticed that there were no treasure chests lying around this time. “Where’s all the treasure then?” he enquired of the wizard, as politely as a hard bitten dwarf who has been dragged to the perilous ends of the world for absolutely nothing could manage. “Where’s the gold?”
The wizard waved a hand dismissively and smiled. “I took your advice and moved it. It was a lot of worthless clutter. All locked away safely downstairs, never fear.” He patted the large ring of keys under his cloak. They jangled comfortingly. “Now, if I might insist, the Finger of Life, power of goodness, please, as agreed. I have waited long enough, and we do have a deal!”
“Ahem!” The dwarf cleared his throat after a moment’s thought. “Johan, the Finger if you please!”
All eyes were on the table as Johan Anstein, ex-Imperial envoy and latest accidental addition to Grunsonn’s Marauders, unwrapped the prize for which they had fought so hard.
The wizard gasped. Johan thought that they’d been tumbled. But no, the wizard was enraptured by the burned and charred chicken leg that sat before him. “May I take it?” he whispered, reaching out a scrawny hand. “Oh, it’s a beauty!”
Privately doubting his aesthetic judgement, the Marauders nevertheless nodded in concert. The wizard was almost in their trap. So far so good.
Then, with a speedy move which they would not have dreamed of witnessing from one so apparently old, the ancient wizard swept aloft the “Finger” and simultaneously gave a loud and triumphantly sinister laugh.
“Mine, it is mine at last!” he roared, holding the chicken leg above his head. As the Marauders looked on in shocked disbelief, the old sorcerer leapt onto the table, scattering maps, charts and wizardly tomes onto the floor of the tower. Discarding his grey robe with a dramatic flourish, the wizard was revealed in a jet black gown, covered in unmistakably necromantic symbols.
“Vot?” Keanu began, backing away. It had taken enough beer to get the Barbarian into the wizard’s tower in the first place, and seeing their patron revealed as a foul necromancer did nothing for his nerves.
Fully aware that the evil wizard was wielding anything but a potent magical item, Grimcrag and Jiriki remained seated, grinning to themselves. Johan, a little unnerved, tried to follow their example, and managed an idiotic teeth-clamping grimace.
With a face like thunder, the dark wizard looked down at them. He regarded them balefully. “Idiots!” he hissed. “Now you see the truth!” Glancing at the Finger, the sorcerer grinned wickedly. Snake-like eyes glittered in his long, bony face.
“This,” he continued, “this is one of the long-lost fingers of the Dread King, foul lieutenant of Nagash himself.” He capered in delight on the tabletop. Johan recognised insanity when he saw it, and by anyone’s book this was a whole chapter to itself.
“You doubt me?” shrieked the sorcerer, regarding their placid expressions. “Why should I lie? I have searched for this for ages. I am old beyond my mortal span, and now, with this, I gain ultimate power and immortality!” Spittle flew from his foam-flecked lips as he ranted.
“Why didn’t you retrieve it yourself, o
ld man?” Jiriki asked quietly. “You’ve obviously known about it for years.”
The sorcerer threw back his head and cackled maniacally. “That’s the joke, you see, that’s the joke.” Doubled up in laughter, tears rolled down his hollow cheeks. Suddenly his squawking laughter stopped, and he stood straight, regarding the warriors with a baleful glare. Pointing at Jiriki, he laughed derisively. “Your kin, ages past, locked the claw away beyond my reach. Sealed it so that none like me could enter the chamber. Guarded it with twelve mighty elf lords for all eternity.” He spat on the floor to mark his disgust. “But I waited. Oh yes, I was patient. I tracked the resting place of the Finger and I plotted and planned. Many tried and failed whilst I brooded long in my tower. Then you arrived and all was clear. I needed you as pawns to do my bidding, just as my great undead armies will do!”
He studied the warriors as if they were mindless vermin, all but unworthy of his gaze. “I needed you to go, unwitting, where I could not. You would unknowingly breach the defences set up by your own kind, and retrieve that which was rightfully mine.” The sorcerer laughed. “Your lot ever was to be lured by greed and avarice.”
“And now?” Grimcrag asked, nodding for the others to stand up. “What happens now?”
The sorcerer paused for a moment, head cocked to one side. “Ah yes, what happens now…” He coughed to clear his throat, and solemnly adjusted his robe about his scrawny body.
“Now I must kill you all. You have been a great help, and it is a great shame of course, but really you have to die!” The wizard chuckled ruefully, and brought the claw down to point at the Marauders. “Doubtless you will later join my hordes of undeath which will march across the world, but now YOU—MUST—DIE!”
As he finished his speech, he closed his eyes, and portentously threw out his arms, waving the claw at Grimcrag and the Marauders.
Despite knowing the impotence of the device, Johan found himself flinching. He need not have worried.
The sorcerer opened his eyes and frowned, puzzled. The Marauders watched him, transfixed by his performance. The wizard drew in a deep breath and tried the ending again: “MUST… DIEEEEE!”
Tales of the Old World Page 32
