Battleaxe

by Sara Douglass

  Behind Axis Arne hissed in surprise. Shapes were drifting out of the mist in front of them. Tall and vaguely man-shaped, the wraiths were so insubstantial that the men of the patrol could see the shapes of other Skraelings milling behind those in the front ranks. Huge silver orbs floated inside their deep eye sockets. Their clawed hands and their skull-like heads, long pointed fangs hanging down from over-sized jaws, were the most solid parts about them.

  Axis hefted the sword in his hand. “Are you ready, my friends?” he called in a clear voice, his tone light. “Will you stand at my back?”

  Axis’ voice gave the others heart. The wraiths milled among themselves, unsettled by the aura of assurance surrounding the leader of the patrol. They preferred overt fear to this disturbing sense of boldness and daring. There was something unusual about this man. What was it?

  “We stand with you, Axis Rivkahson,” Belial called, his voice strong and confident. Magariz joined his voice to that of Belial’s. “We place our trust in you, BattleAxe.”

  “Then let us not wait for attack, let us attack! To me!” Axis spurred Belaguez forward, feeling and hearing the others behind him, and then they were among the Skraeling wraiths.

  The unsettled wraiths fell back. They preferred sneaking attacks to standing defence. Axis dropped Belaguez’s reins, controlling the stallion with only knees and voice, and struck with his sword at the nearest wraith, feeling the pressure against his blade as it sliced through the creature’s eye, revelling in the bright blood that spattered across his own body and down the neck of the grey stallion. “It bleeds!” he screamed and lunged down with his free hand to grab the stringy hair on the wraith’s head, twisting his sword deeper and deeper. He felt so powerful, so in control, that he did not even think to sing the Icarii ward of protection.

  The wraith wailed and grabbed helplessly at the blade as Axis rammed the sword home, writhing and twisting on the cold steel. The moment the blade drew free the wraith fell apart, disintegrating into a mass of grey slimy muck in the snow underneath Belaguez’s plunging hooves.

  Now that he was among them the wraiths knew what he was, knew who he was. Even though the man did not use his power, the Skraelings recognised it, and they were afraid. They had not expected him here!

  “They die!” Axis called, joy strengthening his voice, and reached for the next wraith. About him his men stayed in close formation, Axis’ blood lust communicating itself to them but not tempting them to break rank, flaming brands and swords rising one after the other before plunging deep into the silver orbs of wraith after wraith. Magariz also found himself screaming with excitement, each thrust of his blade one more stroke in revenge. Belial, calmer but equally deadly with his sword, kept his horse close to Axis, one eye on his BattleAxe in case he got too far ahead of the other men and horses and was isolated among the writhing, screeching pack of wraiths.

  Borneheld’s soldiers followed, amazed as the BattleAxe of the Axe-Wielders led them into such an all-consuming deadly attack that for the first time it was the wraiths who were experiencing the rout rather than them. Each and every one of them rallied behind the BattleAxe’s back, drawing strength from his incredible courage and daring. All traces of fear fell away; all revelled in the feeling of power that came from a successful attack rather than a desperate retreat. “To Axis Rivkahson!” one of them cried, and his companions took up the cry, using it almost as a mantra of death as they struck deep into the wraiths time after time. The Axe-Wielders grinned at their companions, and soon all shouted Axis’ name as they killed again and again.

  And then, almost as suddenly as the wraiths had appeared they were gone and the mist began to clear. Belial reached forward and grabbed Belaguez’s bridle, twisting so hard the horse almost fell; Belial had seen the bloodlust in Axis’ eyes and did not want him spurring after the wraiths as they fled.

  “Enough, Axis!” he snapped. “They have gone.”

  Axis turned to him, normality gradually returning to his eyes. “By Artor, Belial, that felt good. I needed that.” Belial grinned and then laughed, releasing Belaguez’s bridle. “Remind me not to come along with you the next time you feel like a little emotional release, my friend. I thought you were going to skewer me at one point!” His eyes drifted down to Axis’ hands and he suddenly paled, his laughter dying as quickly as it had begun.

  “Axis,” he breathed. “Look what you hold!”

  Axis glanced down. In his left hand he held the head of one of the Skraeling wraiths, surprisingly solid but utterly dead. One of its silver eyes was punctured and drained of fluid, the other staring sightlessly into eternity. Its mouth hung flaccidly, teeth still gleaming wickedly in the re-emerging sunlight. Its ashen skin was so thin that the bone of its skull threatened to break through its faint overlay.

  Axis hefted it in his hand and held it high for all the men to see. “See!” he cried, his voice drifting triumphantly across the frozen wastes. “They can die too.” He lowered his voice and looked at Magariz. “A gift for Borneheld, methinks,” he said, and Magariz flinched a little at the harshness in Axis’ eyes and voice.

  Of all present, Arne was the only one not with his eyes fixed on Axis’ face. He kept his eyes drifting across the frozen wastes about them, ever vigilant for fresh treachery and attack. “BattleAxe,” he hissed. “’Ware behind you!”

  Axis swung Belaguez about, his face tightening. Walking fearlessly towards them was a creature conceived in someone’s nightmare. Magariz inhaled convulsively. “Is that one of the creatures that attacked you?” Axis asked softly. Magariz nodded. “Yes, but more so. They have grown, changed, since they attacked Gorkenfort.”

  Axis’ hand tightened on the hilt of his sword.

  About fifteen paces away the creature stopped. It was both massive and graceful at the same time, taller and more heavily muscled than a man, but with a movement so sinuous that it reminded many of those watching of a stalking cat. Its head was a horror—part bird, part man, part beast. It had a hooked beak for a mouth and vicious tusks protruding from its cheekbones. Its eyes and forehead were man-shaped, but its skull was covered by a crazy mixture of fur and feathers, while its naked body was scaled like that of a lizard. Its hands and feet were tipped with massive black claws, and from its back extended two leathery wings that were similarly tipped with lethal black talons.

  Axis sat Belaguez quietly, looking unconcerned by the dreadful creature that confronted them. Inside, however, he remembered the face of Gorgrael in the clouds at the Ancient Barrows. This creature shared many of its features.

  Gorgrael’s creature regarded them for a moment, its head tilted inquisitively like that of a bird although its silver eyes glinted with the deadly madness of a cornered boar. The wind ruffled the fur and feathers atop its elongated head. It focused on the head of the Skraeling that Axis held in his gloved hand.

  “Sssss!” it hissed, then raised its beady eyes to Axis. “You are Rivkahson?”

  Its voice was half-bird’s chirp, half-hiss, and hard to understand. It had to speak slowly, as if it were an effort to get the words past its over-large tongue.

  Axis nodded and edged Belaguez forward a step. “Who are you? What do you want of us?” he asked.

  The creature laughed, a horrible gurgling hiss. “I? I am one of the favoured five—we are the SkraeBold. We serve Gorgrael. What do we want? We want Tencendor, Rivkahson. We want to see your fields and forests stained dark with the blood of your peoples. We are sick of inhabiting only misty frozen wastes. We grow solid with our need, our hate.”

  “We will stand before you,” Magariz said flatly behind Axis. “We will keep you to your frozen wastes.”

  The SkraeBold tilted its head, opened its beak, and howled its amusement to the sky. All the men shifted nervously as the sound crashed about them. The SkraeBold abruptly shut its beak with an audible snap and looked back at them.

  “You will not be able to stop us,” it hissed angrily. “Gorgrael gives us strength. Gorgrael recreates us from the f
lesh and blood that we kill for him. Once we were mist, now we can walk.”

  Again a maddening thought hovered at the back of Axis’ mind.

  The SkraeBold continued. “The day will come, soon, when your blood will feed my brothers, when your daughters and sisters will offer us the use of their bodies in exchange for their lives, when you, Rivkahson, will beg for mercy before Gorgrael!”

  Axis smiled coldly and leaned forward over the pommel of his saddle. “I have a message for your Gorgrael, SkraeBold. Tell him that my father loved me. Ask him, did his father love him?”

  The creature took a step forward in fury and both Magariz and Belial lifted their swords, but Axis did not move, keeping his smile on his face. “I and my four brothers love Gorgrael!” it screeched in fury. “He needs no father but us! We were the ones who midwived his birth!”

  Then it simply faded. One moment it was there and the next it was not. With it went the final vestiges of the mist.

  Axis wheeled Belaguez about and smiled at his patrol. “I think we have done enough this day, my friends. Shall we ride for Gorkenfort?”

  Borneheld was at weapon practice in the fort’s courtyard when the patrol returned, his bare chest glistening with sweat even in the frigid air, his skin steaming, the heavy sword hanging from both hands. To one side of the quadrangle Faraday watched, wrapped in her dark-green cloak.

  Nineteen men had ridden out early in the morning, including Axis, and nineteen returned. They must have evaded all the wraiths, Borneheld thought as he swung round to receive them. Cowards. Women. He failed to notice that all nineteen rode with straight and proud backs and that whatever demons Axis had carried out with him earlier in the morning, he seemed to have lost them somewhere in the snowfields. Borneheld also failed to notice that the neck of Axis’ grey stallion was spattered with blood, or that a goodly crowd of men had followed the patrol up to Gorkenfort’s gates. He most certainly did not notice the object that Axis carried half-hidden in his cloak. Perhaps if he had noticed all these things he would have been a little more circumspect in what he said in front of the many witnesses who crowded the large courtyard of Gorkenfort. Jorge and Roland looked on from the parapets, while, unseen to most eyes, the three Sentinels watched from behind a half-unloaded cart of supplies. They had feared deeply for the StarMan’s life out there this day.

  Borneheld leaned on his sword, proud of his physique, as Axis stopped his horse some ten paces away. “Did your horse run too fast for the wraiths to catch you, BattleAxe?” he sneered. “Did you discover for yourself that only men can deal with these creatures? If you yet have the bravery to admit your nerve has completely abandoned you I will summon enough sympathy to find you a job cleaning the pots in the kitchens. You should be safe enough there.” He allowed himself a small laugh at his wit.

  With his words Borneheld instantly lost the respect and loyalty of the nine of his own men who had ridden in the patrol. Later he would lose the trust and respect of most of those the nine spoke to. Axis simply smiled benignly and glanced across to Faraday, sketching a courtly bow to her from Belaguez’s saddle. “Greetings, Duchess. I trust you slept easy last night?”

  Faraday stiffened, stung by his words. Her guilt at her betrayal of the man had kept her sleepless long after Borneheld had rolled his heavy body away from hers.

  Axis held her eyes for a moment, then glanced back towards Borneheld. He pushed the hood of his cloak down about his shoulders so that now the weak noon sun caught the gold of his hair and beard. His proud bearing and innate grace commanded the attention of all in the courtyard. If a stranger had walked into the courtyard at that moment he would instantly have assumed the golden-haired man on the grey stallion was a king and the more heavily muscled man who faced him his subordinate.

  Just as Borneheld opened his mouth, Axis raised his left hand and held the ghastly object high for all to see. There was a collective gasp of repugnance. Axis’ eyes had not left Borneheld’s. “Gorgrael sends greetings, brother, and I present you with this wedding gift. Enjoy.”

  He hurled the head at Borneheld’s feet and Borneheld jumped out of the way, his face recoiling with horror as the Skraeling head slid by him on the slippery cobbles to stop just short of Faraday’s feet. She took a huge breath and closed her eyes for a moment, but she held her ground and finally looked away from the head and back at Axis. Her face was tightly impassive but her eyes were dark with emotion. Her knuckles were white where they gripped her cloak.

  “I thank you, Axis Rivkahson,” she said, her voice calm and dignified, “that you thought I should have deserved such a gift.”

  Axis’ face hardened and he held her stare for a moment longer before he turned Belaguez back towards the crowd gathered at the fortified gateway.

  Borneheld’s face darkened in fury as he stared at the repulsive head lying at his wife’s feet and heard the cheers of the crowd as they saluted Axis.

  44

  VOWS AND MEMORIES

  Five days later Axis wrapped himself in a thick cloak against the cold, pulled the hood down far over his face and stepped out through the gates of Gorkenfort, walking quickly down through the streets of Gorkentown. Even though it was only mid-morning the streets were almost bare of soldiers, the weather now so frigid that most only ventured outside for essentials. Death lurked in the wind.

  Axis did not see the two hooded and cloaked shadows following him from Gorkenfort, one trailing the other by twenty or twenty-five paces.

  He walked for fifteen minutes until he reached the all-but-deserted Retreat of the Brotherhood of the Seneschal close to the outer wall of the town. The two surviving Brothers had long since moved into the fort itself, but Axis had specifically asked the older Brother to meet him here this morning. He had questions to ask. Here was another link with his mother.

  The heavy wooden door was standing open, half off its hinges, and Axis quickly stepped inside, grateful for the protection from the wind even though it was almost as cold inside as it was out. He looked about him. The Retreat still bore the scars of the attack by Gorgrael’s creatures, the SkraeBolds and the Skraelings, several months previously. Once a comfortable residence for brothers who desired to spend their lives in quiet meditation in northern Ichtar, now torn hangings of drapes and tapestries flapped in the stiff breeze that wafted in through the open doors, while the furniture was broken and strewn about the floors. Axis shrugged deeper inside his cloak and wandered through the main apartments of the lower floor, occasionally coming across fragments of torn books and pottery, and a spare habit or two left to hang behind a door or on a nail in the wall, its owner long since dead.

  Brother Francis was waiting for him in the kitchens. Stooped over an overturned cauldron when Axis entered, he slowly straightened his arthritic spine and faced the BattleAxe.

  “Greetings, BattleAxe.” He looked about the room for a moment, his transparent blue-veined skin stretched tightly over the frail bones of his face. “This was where so many of the brothers died the night the creatures attacked. It was the only place they thought to find weapons.” He picked up a poker and held it for a moment, his face sad. “But pokers and pan ladles are no match for the powers of such beasts as we faced that night.”

  “Yet you escaped,” Axis said softly, moving around to the old man.

  Brother Francis’ eyes dimmed a little, as though he felt guilty. He nodded. “Brother Martin, young and of quick presence of mind, pulled me into a linen closet where we huddled, listening to our family being torn to pieces outside. Pray you never have to listen to such as that.”

  For long moments there was silence, Axis standing deep in thought as Brother Francis pottered about the kitchen, picking up the various pots and pans lying about the floor and placing them neatly in ranks upon the bench spaces.

  “Brother Francis, do you know who I am?” Axis finally asked, lifting his head to look at the man. Brother Francis stopped his useless efforts at tidying and stared a moment at him.

  Finally he nodded.
“Yes. I know who you are. The soldiers in the streets speak of no-one else, of your patrols, of your courage, of your leadership. Your name is Axis Rivkahson and you have come to ask me about your mother.”

  “She died here.”

  Francis looked surprised for a moment, but he quickly recovered. “She gave birth to you here, Axis. Yes. But she died elsewhere, not here.” He smiled a little sadly at the shock on Axis’ face. “I am an old man now, Axis Rivkahson, and I am not frightened of the things that I once was. For many years I have held my silence, each year burying another of my fellows who knew the secret. Now only I am left with the memory.” He paused before continuing. “All of us were so scared of the king, old King Karel it was then, and of the fury of Duke Searlas, that none of us ever spoke again of the events that surrounded your birth. But now I have seen such horrors that the fury of earthly creatures no longer frightens me. And now stands before me the young babe who lost his mother. I will speak, if you wish it.”

  Axis considered. “No, Brother Francis. Perhaps the danger for you is not yet past. The Duke of Ichtar still walks the streets of Gorkentown. I will not knowingly put you in danger. All I ask is that you show me the room where I was born.”

  “That is all? Very well. Follow me.”

  Francis led Axis back through the ground floor apartments until they reached the entrance hall, then he started to climb the great curved stone stairway that led into the upper reaches of the Retreat. His breath wheezed a little in his throat as he climbed and Axis stepped forward, supporting his arm. “Thank you,” the Brother gasped, pausing to catch his breath. “They carried your mother in through the main doors,” he said, ignoring Axis’ injunction not to risk saying anything. After so long holding his silence, Francis felt that he had to mention something about those few days at the end of Wolf-month of that winter thirty years ago; it was almost a confession for him. “I was young and strong then, and I was one of the ones who helped to carry Rivkah. Searlas had brought her to Gorkentown in an old wagon, and the journey was hard. She had gone into labour fifteen hours out from the town, and those last few leagues across the pot-holed road must have been agony for her.”