Honourkeeper

by Nick Kyme

  Before he could try and rally the army, the warlord’s huscarl retinue surged forward, presenting shields and stern-faced aggression to the dwarf king, before hauling their chieftain away. At first the warlord resisted, roaring in defiant rage, but as he caught sight of something in the distance behind him he relented.

  Bagrik followed the Norscan’s eye and saw the shaman for the first time. Shawled in ragged robes, his thin fingers wrapped around a staff of gnarled bone, the lone shaman cut a wretched figure. As he moved, slipping from the dwarf king’s sight, he seemed almost serpentine, and Bagrik swore the shaman’s eyes flared like the green flash across the horizon line, before he slithered from view. It was but a fleeting glance, a sense of agelessness and malevolence lingering in the dwarf’s mind once the shaman had gone. The skies then darkened for Bagrik, and the blackness he had held at bay finally claimed him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  No Mercy

  The field beyond Broken Anvil Hill was like a charnel ground.

  Norscan bodies littered the blood-slick earth, cleaved by axes or pierced by spears. Mammoth carcasses slumped alongside them, being feasted on by the carrion that had descended in the battle’s aftermath.

  Held in reserve at the western approach to Broken Anvil Hill, and concealed from the Norscans’ view, the elf cavalry had ridden slowly through the sparse copses of pine. Once the enemy had committed to the attack, their flanks fully engaged by the elven spears, Lethralmir and his knights had sounded their advance. Exploding from the treeline the charge of the knights was irresistible. The warning cries of the Norscan outriders had been much too late, the feral horseman and their brutish steeds swept away in a red haze. The relentless vigour of Lethralmir driving them, the elf nobles had smashed into the rear of the northmen horde and shut the trap with a line of elven steel. Beset on all sides, the courage of the heathens had cracked like thawing ice pounded by a thousand hammers.

  Lances spitted with quivering northmen bodies, their long swords slicked with blood, the elf knights had cleaved through the fleeing horde rending and killing at will. Panic had turned to fear and in moments the Norscans were fleeing with abandon, trampling their own warriors in their urgency to escape certain death.

  The will of the enemy broken, the dwarfs and elves had surged forward, intent on dealing them a brutal parting blow, before the order to hold the line was sounded and the allies cheered victory and shouted curses at the disappearing Norscan horde.

  Drenched in blood and the bodies of the fallen, the field was theirs.

  Bagrik opened his eyes and found that he was in the bed chamber of his war tent. Iron braziers burned quietly at the edges of the room. The dwarf king sat up and saw Morek at the foot of his bed, swathed in flickering shadow.

  As Bagrik awoke, two priestesses of Valaya emerged from the penumbra at the recesses of the bed chamber. They carried salves and poultices, smiling benevolently as they approached the king.

  ‘You’re alive then,’ said Morek, a flare of light illuminating his face as he ignited his pipe.

  ‘You look as old as I feel,’ Bagrik replied, scowling at one of the Valakryn as she dabbed the purple-black bruise on his shoulder where the Norscan warlord had struck him. The other uncorked the bottled salve and began tending the cuts and gashes on the dwarf king’s body.

  Morek grunted in half-hearted amusement.

  ‘The elgi’s plan worked,’ he said, somewhat begrudgingly. ‘The cavalry broke the northmen horde in the end.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Bagrik, ‘after we had worn them down. Let them have their glory. We know the truth of it–’ he began, but was interrupted with the Valakryn’s ministrations.

  ‘Enough fussing,’ he snapped furiously, making the priestesses recoil. ‘Can a king get no peace?’ A confused look suddenly crept onto Bagrik’s face and he looked beneath the hruk wool blanket covering his body. ‘I am naked under here!’ he cried, face reddening. ‘Get these rinns out of here, Morek!’

  The Valakryn retreated, backing out of the bed chamber quickly with their heads bowed.

  ‘Worse than Brunvilda,’ Bagrik muttered shame-facedly once they were gone.

  Morek chuckled, smoke escaping from the upcurled corners of his mouth.

  ‘I removed your armour and trappings, my king,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Your dignity is safe.’

  Bagrik groused under his breath and threw off the blanket. Grimacing, the naked dwarf king struggled from his bed.

  ‘You need rest,’ said Morek, his tone expressing the futility of his words.

  His advice went unheeded as Bagrik hobbled over to his war attire where it lay draped on a plain stone statue. He took his helmet, encircled by his glittering crown, and set it upon his head.

  ‘Gather my army,’ said Bagrik, his back to his captain. It was a bizarre image, the dwarf king standing naked in the firelight, just wearing his warhelm. ‘Tell the elves we are mustering.’

  Morek stepped forward without need for request, and pressed the king’s tankard into his hand. Bagrik quaffed the ale in one thirsty gulp, belching loudly as he wiped the foam from his beard.

  ‘Now we chase these dogs down,’ he growled.

  Victory at Broken Anvil Hill gave the dwarfs and elves the impetus they sorely needed. Forged on the altar of battle that day was an alliance of silver and bronze that would not easily be undone. Suspicion and mistrust were washed away by shed blood and sweat experienced mutually on the field, the emergent camaraderie between the two races galvanised through shared triumph.

  Winter still refused to relinquish its iron grip on the land as the dwarfs and elves doggedly pursued the fleeing Norscan horde through the snow-capped mountains, through drifts and icy winds. The spring thaw had begun slowly, the white shrouded peaks filling the lowland rivers with their melt waters. At Lake Kagrad, known also as Blood Water, due to its rusted sheen and tang caused by the copper ore embedded in its basin, the allies caught the northmen rearguard. Unprepared, and with the fight beaten out of them, a rout quickly became a slaughter and Lake Kagrad became the Blood Water in more than just name alone.

  As the dwarfs and elves pressed on with their campaign, moving ever northward, skirmishes between scouts became common. After several weeks of this guerrilla fighting along the cragged spine of the Worlds Edge, the allies brought the Norscan horde to battle again, upon an immense and lofty plateau surrounded by the soaring peaks of High Pass.

  Thunder echoed around the mountains like the angry cries of gods, and lightning tore the sky apart in brilliant forked flashes. Clouds gathered and the rain swept down in a relentless barrage, rattling against armour plates and helmets in a frenetic din as the two armies fought.

  Ten thousand northmen plummeted over the edge of High Pass that storm-wracked day, unable to resist the sheer fury of their determined enemy.

  The dwarfs formed an impenetrable wall of shields and marched forward resolutely. At the flanks, elf knights and horsemasters killed any Norscans who tried to flee whilst archers and quarrellers thinned the host that was being slowly corralled before the advancing dwarfs. The back ranks fell first, screaming as they were pushed into mist-filled oblivion by their fellow northmen. Death was as inexorable as the passing of the seasons. Those that did escape survived only by virtue of an inexplicable mist that roiled over the edges of the plateau and filled the stony battlefield utterly. Though they were still many, the Norscans had been cut down brutally from an all-conquering horde to a band of raiders. Yet, the Norscan warlord and his shaman had eluded them again, and whilst they lived the dwarfs’ and elves’ task was not done.

  Bagrik brooded in his war tent, a pipe cinched between his lips, still wearing his armour.

  ‘This is not battle,’ he muttered, undoing the straps of his gilded vambrace and letting it fall to the ground. ‘It is massacre.’

  The victory at High Pass was three weeks behind them and they were now travelling across country, having harried the Norscan horde across the lands of barbarian men
and finally to within sight of the Sea of Claws.

  ‘They are running out of earth to flee to,’ said Morek, sat opposite his king in the close confines of the tent.

  The dwelling was little more than a square-edged pavilion, much smaller and less ostentatious than Bagrik’s tent at Broken Anvil Hill. With camp broken every few hours, there was not enough time to erect the larger dwellings. Most of the troops, in fact, shared makeshift bivouacs and were huddled together against the growing cold of the north and the icy rain that had persisted for six straight days.

  ‘Aye, then I’ll finish what we started at Broken Anvil Hill,’ the dwarf king promised darkly. Since that day when he had fallen at the end of the allies’ first triumph, Bagrik had sought his nemesis, the Norscan warlord, in every conflict. Thus far, he had been thwarted. His shaman, the supposed daemon that wore a man’s flesh as the dwarf king would wear a cloak or pelt, was also proving elusive. It mattered not – he could wait. Patience was an easy thing for a dwarf. Bagrik knew the enemy he wanted was not so far ahead.

  ‘Something troubles me,’ Morek began, easing back on a stool as he regarded his king. ‘Why leave the bodies behind, at the gorge I mean. Why leave Nagrim and those with him for the carrion?’

  Bagrik’s face darkened further.

  ‘Who can say what drives these honourless dogs. I have more regard for beasts than these north-men.’

  Before Morek could reply the flap to the small tent opened and a wet, bedraggled Haggar entered. He bowed once to his king and then thumped his chest in salute to Morek before he spoke.

  ‘News from the rangers,’ he said, breathlessly.

  Bagrik imagined that the young banner bearer had run all the way across camp.

  ‘The northmen are holed up in a vast cave that looks out upon the Sea of Claws,’ he said. ‘They are making their final stand there.’

  Morek raised an eyebrow, quizzically.

  ‘I honestly thought they would get in their ships and flee across the ocean,’ he said.

  ‘Be thankful they did not,’ growled Bagrik. ‘Both of you,’ he barked, ‘prepare your warriors. We march within the hour.’

  Ulfjarl slumped upon his throne, defeated. The noise from the Sea of Claws carried from the mouth of the cave as it boomed and thundered, funnelled through a wide cleft cut into the rock of the cliff. Salt-tainted air tasted bitter and cold in his mouth and every wave smashing against the deadly hidden reef near the shore sounded like mocking laughter.

  The seat on which the Norscan now brooded was carved from the bones of his enemies. It was meant to be a trophy of his victory. Instead, it had become a painful reminder of his bitter defeat. Casting his gaze about the hollow cave, Ulfjarl saw his scattered huscarl retinue in the thrall of manifested daemonettes. Daemon and man in varying stages of licentious consort cavorted languidly around him, mewling, moaning, and crying out in pleasurable agony. His warriors were ensnared by the creatures’ deadly charms as they flickered in and out of existence in the jade-coloured smoke hugging the ground beneath his feet. Ulfjarl refused their lascivious advances, only the force of his iron will keeping them at bay.

  His army was beaten. Many had already fled. Those he had caught deserting he had killed – their flayed flesh was displayed on crude standards rammed into the soft earth around the cave mouth as a warning to the others camped outside, crouched silently around dying fires. Only Ulfjarl’s loyal Norscans remained; the subjugated tribes were all gone. The mammoths were nearly all dead. Destiny was slipping through his grasp – the destiny that Veorik had promised him.

  The shaman waited patiently in the shadows behind him, almost part of the thickening darkness of the cave. Though he had his back to him, Ulfjarl knew he was there. He felt Veorik’s emerald eyes boring into him. The shaman’s quiet displeasure was like insidious poison seeping into his body. Ulfjarl felt his glory fading, together with the favour he had garnered through the barter of his undying soul.

  What had gone wrong? Had he not sworn his loyalty to the Dark Gods? Had he not shown his might when he had crushed the immortals and their craven watch towers? Had he not demonstrated his will during the slaughter of the elf army in the plains beyond their glittering city? He had offered up their souls as a gift to Shornaal, and the Prince of Raptures had repaid him with boons. Even now Ulfjarl touched the wound in his helmet with tentative and fearful fingers. Through the gaping crevice that the bearded king of the mountain had gouged in him, Ulfjarl could see the world again and the bright vista hurt his eyes. He had thought the meteoric iron was indestructible. He had thought he was indestructible. It was not so.

  Only the bearded king of the mountain had ever hurt Ulfjarl. At first he had felt anger, a wrathful desire to rend and tear the diminutive warrior apart in the name of the Dark Gods, but then anger had fled, eroded by doubt and the threat of his own mortality. Ulfjarl was in disarray, and Veorik was no longer any comfort or guide. The Norscan warlord’s strength, the strength of his rule, was slipping like the dread blade fused into his flesh. He felt it, the black glaive that had become one with his will, reject him. It was a constant struggle now, the black veins in his arm ever restless and eager for egress, to maintain his grip upon it.

  The torches at either side of Ulfjarl’s throne flickered wildly, their flames bent as if like fiery water rolling down a slope. Except… they were flowing the wrong way, against the wind. Ulfjarl looked up suddenly, his warrior senses prickling with alarm, and saw a sliver of shadow seemingly detach itself from the wall. At first it was like black smoke, an amorphous thing fashioned from the dark that crept slowly towards the Norscan chief like a wraith. Robes emerged from the dissipating smoke, curves and flowing lines that shaped a lithe body clad in iridescent violet. Only the suggestion of a face was visible beneath a voluminous cowl; the edge of a nose, the ridge of a cheekbone, picked out in the wan light.

  Rothfeg, a huscarl still with some of his wits about him, noticed the apparition gliding towards his chieftain and hastily grabbing his warhammer charged the clandestine figure. Arms folded benignly across its chest, the enrobed one calmly took its hand out from where it was concealed in its opposite sleeve and Rothfeg was immolated by a flare of violet flame. The huscarl died swiftly, in agony and raptures, the fat of his flesh dripping onto the floor like wax where it first boiled and then cooled. Charred bone ash remained as the enrobed one passed the warrior and came before Ulfjarl himself.

  Veorik had not moved. Leastways, Ulfjarl had not heard him move. The warlord raised a hand to stave off his other huscarls who had realised belatedly that their chieftain might be in danger.

  ‘Ulfjarl, Chosen of Shornaal, you languish in defeat,’ said the enrobed one, its voice androgynous, ageless and coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

  The sense of it was disconcerting and though Ulfjarl did not speak the language that issued from its mouth, he understood every word.

  ‘Do you still desire victory and endless power?’ it asked sibilantly.

  Ulfjarl rose to his feet and nodded slowly, transfixed by the robed spectre in front of him.

  ‘Slay the bearded king,’ it told him. ‘Slay him and claim your victory.’ The enrobed one slipped its hand back into the folds of its sleeve and when it came out again held a long, serrated dagger. Carrying the cruel-looking weapon in two hands, the enrobed one proffered it to Ulfjarl as if in supplication.

  Slowly, Ulfjarl reached for the weapon. He was about to touch the blade to gauge its sharpness, when he saw the leprous-yellow shimmer upon it and stopped short. Instead, reacting to his instincts, the Norscan took the hilt and handle in a firm grip. Removing the long knife from the sheath on his belt, he replaced it with the serrated dagger.

  Seemingly satisfied, the enrobed one bowed once and backed away, melting slowly into dark ether as it became one with the shadow once more.

  The ash that remained of Rothfeg stirred. Peering deeply, Ulfjarl saw the semblance of a creature within the huscarl’s remains. Sobbing, chi
rruping in what sounded like debased laughter and writhing in agony, something manifested in that purple ash. Wretched and beautiful at the same time, the nascent thing grew at an exponential rate. Scar-tissue blubber, shot through with bruise-black veins, throbbed into a fat mass of flesh. Muscled haunches pressed outward from it, stretching glabrous skin and extending into saurian legs. Lastly, there came a head, emerging perversely from a crevice hollowed out in the blubber. Its eyes glinted wetly, either side of an equine skull and a thin, spine-like tongue whipped back and forth from its snout as it tasted the air. The flesh-thing reminded Ulfjarl of a giant flightless bird though there was the sense of something disturbingly human about it.

  The enrobed one had left a second gift.

  Ulfjarl got to his feet and clenched his fist. He felt strength there again. The black veins were no longer restive. Looking to Veorik, he found renewed purpose and knew what he must do.

  Ulfjarl gazed down at his throne, raised the obsidian blade aloft and smashed the bone seat into fragments. In the flickering torchlight, he saw that his shaman was smiling.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A Final Reckoning

  A bitter wind was blowing off the Sea of Claws.

  King Bagrik was standing upon the war shield of Karak Ungor. Inscribed with ancient runes, the shield’s gromril surface blazed with a polished sheen. Runic manacles clasped Bagrik’s booted feet, steadying him so he could stand with his wounded leg. He wore a suit of gromril scale, and a mail coif beneath his crowned battle helm, the faceplate having been removed so he could better see the foe. Bagrik’s rune axe was cleaned of blood and shone dully in the early dawn light. Its gilded glory did not echo the dwarf king’s mood.