Swords of Steel Omnibus

by Howie K Bentley et al.

  Brakur turned his face back toward the cliff. He looked up at Vyntane, his former deathbed, and let out a siren cry so high-pitched and tortured that Raenon knelt on the deck, pawing at his ears in agony.

  The Insane One finally crested the bluff. The ship was far enough away that Raenon could see the towers of The Iron Castle. He watched Brakur, who was more than half as tall as the keep, hold the two shorter towers in His clawed hands. He ripped them out as if they were sticks in mud and cast them into the sea. Any hope Raenon had for the people of Vyntane was surely gone now. The foe of sanity had come to reclaim His abode.

  The Aelbronder looked back upon the deck of Sanhar’s ship. The rest of his crew had fainted, all except Sanhar. Likewise, all but one of the rescued Vyntanites lay unconscious upon the deck, a giant man that wore the leathers of a smith.

  The three of them stood silent for a few moments. Finally Sanhar spoke. “I suppose that this is the beginning.”

  Raenon looked at him, confused. “The beginning? It looks to be the end.”

  Sanhar stepped forward. “The end of Vyntane perhaps, but the beginning of a new age. An age where The Gods dwell among men. Two days ago, a lord’s messenger from Haiklan arrived on The Jewel. He said that Ylar’s tomb had been opened and lay empty. That is a strange thing because his tomb may only be opened from the inside.”

  The smith stood next to Raenon and put his hand on his shoulder. “Aye, Aelbronder, from your sword I can see you are from Maehlin. I’m sure you have heard the bards sing of Farik’s awakening. If he should break free of his chains in the heart of Shunned Albrunn, I will forge him a sword myself, one great enough to bring here and cut from Brakur His profaned head.”

  Raenon smiled at that, despite the proceedings. “And what is your name, friend?”

  “I am Aarna,” he replied, “now the last of Vyntane’s sorcerer smiths.”

  The Mirror Beguiling

  By James Ashbey

  Telekir gazed with malice into the black face of the Mirror Beguiling. For long years the Mirror had been his chief ally, residing as it did in the uppermost chamber of Wistwood Tor. It was his window on the world, casting his sight far into the lands of those who had hounded and shunned him. Now, in the winter of his long life, Telekir clung like a limpet to the edge of civilisation, his thoughts ever bent on revenge.

  Turning from his dark divinations, he shrieked in the direction of a small wooden door in the corner of the room. “Grubbin! Attend me, you miserable woodlouse!” A few moments passed, then his call was answered by the sound of bare feet frantically ascending stone stairs. The door opened, and Grubbin entered.

  “Command me, high one!” mewled the newly arrived creature, his filthy garments clinging limply to his wasted frame. He was one of the forest-kin by birth, though there was scant sign of this proud breeding left in him. Twelve years as Telekir’s lackey had seen to that.

  “Grubbin, I have looked into the Mirror.”

  The wretched slave gritted his teeth, silently damning the tedium that was to follow. Then he uttered the obligatory response: “What has been scried, O Telekir Fargazer?”

  “Many things, fool. The glass is of Alandian make, and heeds not the petty laws of nature.” Grubbin rolled his eyes discreetly as Telekir continued. “Foremost in my scrying was a means to destroy the hateful city of Kuwatash, and all who dwell therein.”

  Grubbin’s interest grew. His master’s revelations were typically vague at best, and often gibberish. But this time there was a clear note of purpose in the old man’s ravings; perhaps even the prospect of action.

  “Grubbin, I have learnt of a foul creature living at the uttermost rim of the world. He broods amidst the Qalati Mountains and spends his days in bitterness, nurturing to life plagues of shocking virulence which he stockpiles towards some unknown end. Men call him Arath the Exile, but of his true name and pedigree one should ask the bitumen canvas of night, whence came he in an epoch too remote to fathom. And there would come no answer, only the cold glare of alien stars.”

  It was hopeless, thought Grubbin, his curiosity extinguished. He had long known that his master’s mind was as frail and worm-eaten as the parchment of his books, but it seemed at last to have crumbled to dust. He edged towards the door, hoping to leave Telekir alone to his ramblings.

  Suddenly his muscles froze, and a sensation of extreme cold coursed through his body, emanating from the torc of twisted iron that he wore around his neck. “Slave, I am not finished!” boomed the voice of Telekir. “You well know what power I hold over you by virtue of that fine neckpiece you wear, but do not think you have felt its fiercest bite. Untold agonies are the wages of true disobedience.”

  The icy chill subsided, and Grubbin slumped to the floor, shivering helplessly. Telekir walked to a wooden cabinet at the side of the chamber, and produced from it a small velvet pouch.

  “I have gathered intelligence from far and wide,” he resumed, turning back to face his thrall. “I have weighed my options with the Mirror’s aid, and there is one man alone who would seek out Arath in his mountain lair, and see his pestilent gifts delivered to the streets of Kuwatash. A man to whom morality is ash, and chaos the only creed. A man whose name is whispered by the weak, and cursed by the strong… his services will not be cheap.” With a thin smile Telekir turned out the contents of the velvet pouch onto his opened palm.

  He held in his hand a ruby of immense size. Its deep red colouring seemed to pulse in the candlelight like a beating heart freshly torn from a sacrifice. Grubbin had seen nothing of its like before.

  “Listen very closely, Grubbin. Here is what you must do…”

  * * *

  There are men in the wild reaches of the world whose only calling is combat. They care nothing for the colonnades and fountains of the great cities, nor the timid songs of harp and flute. Indeed, their cares of any kind are few: the clamour of battle and the besting of one’s foe; the writhing contours of a young woman; the savouring of fine drink and hearty food. Such things alone can stir the soul of the warrior.

  Rúga Hawkhand mused on this theme, fancying that by night’s end he would achieve in full that catalogue of triumphs which most fire a man’s heart. It had been a day rich in bloodshed and rapine, and he and his men had removed deep into their native wilderness to toast the audacity of their raid. Three of their comrades had been freed from the dungeons of Gharboud, and much pillaging was had at the expense of their jailers, the wicked monks of Nesh.

  Rúga knelt alone on the food mat in the centre of his spacious yurt, a kingly platter of meat, fish, and fruit arrayed before him. He selected an attractive cut of venison, fresh from the hunt, and followed it with a gulp of the intense wine for which the Purthian coast is famed.

  The sound of light breathing and shifting fabric caught his attention, and he looked over to the silken drapes that surrounded his sleeping pallet. The light of the tent’s oil lamps shone through the thin hangings to reveal the soft female form of Stasha, his favourite plaything. Rúga sipped more of the Purthian wine, his eyes following the gentle undulations of Stasha’s body as she stirred from sleep. This is how the mighty live, he thought to himself.

  Outside the yurt the noises of the warband’s merrymaking came to a sudden halt. Rúga tensed instantly, his feral instincts taking over. He heard the gruff voice of Octar, his lieutenant: “Who in Grod’s name are you?”

  In moments Rúga was on his feet and bounding to the tent’s doorway, not waiting to be summoned. He emerged to find his warriors scattered around the camp, each of them looking towards the newcomer who trespassed on their revelry: a thin childlike figure, shambling wearily through the camp’s perimeter. His garments were ragged, and a torc of twisted iron encircled his neck.

  “Name yourself!” growled Octar again. The massive fighter pointed his spear at the intruder menacingly.

  “I am named Grubbin, a lowly servant of Telekir the Sage. I have trekked here from Wistwood, countless leagues hence, seeking the one named
Rúga Hawkhand.”

  “You have found him,” responded Rúga himself, striding forward. “What business does your master have out here on the Great Steppe, and why should I entertain a runt sent in his stead?”

  “My master is aged and frail, too weak of body to leave his high tower. He sends me in his place to bring you a great gift, and a greater proposal.”

  Rúga gave Grubbin a long scrutinising look. He thought himself skilled in the reading of others, but this odd little creature vexed him. It was a marvel that he had survived the journey this far into steppe country; more marvellous still that he had found their ever-roving camp. There was more to him than met the eye. “I will listen,” concluded Rúga bluntly. “But we will sit alone; my men have lost enough drinking time for one night.”

  Grubbin sat opposite Rúga in his yurt, relaying Telekir’s designs as best he could while the famed marauder selected morsels from the food mat. Grubbin reached the end of his master’s message and waited nervously while Rúga noisily defleshed a peach.

  “Your enslaver plots a terrible end for Kuwatash,” muttered Rúga at length, wiping peach juice from his thin black beard. “I am no friend of that louse-nest myself, but what are its crimes to deserve such punishment?” The question was inevitable, and its response had been much rehearsed by Grubbin on his long quest.

  “For one, my master was gravely wronged by the lords of Kuwatash, many years ago. They stripped him of his vestments as a Priest of Penumbra, and cast him into the wild like an animal. But much more than this, they now plot a dreadful new empire that will stretch from the east sea to the west, bringing a long age of darkness and misery to all who fail to kneel.” These latter falsehoods came out just as Telekir had dictated; a fact that filled Grubbin with a faint sense of pride.

  Finally he produced the velvet pouch which had been his burden on his long journey, and emptied its precious contents onto the food mat.

  “This is the Huhraan Ruby. It was mined in the Pordur Valley when the world was young, and once adorned the brow of Zirgos the Vile. It is now yours, as a small flavour of the greater riches that will pass to you on completion of this deed.” Anxiety bubbled behind Grubbin’s calm delivery; Rúga had given no indication of a decision, and Telekir’s instructions were running dry.

  At last the barbarian chief made his decision. “We will ride to the Qalati Mountains. We will seek out this beast you describe, and there judge for ourselves if this cause be worthy.” He picked up the ruby and rotated it before his eyes, studying the way it glimmered in the lamplight. “You can tell your cowering master that I ride not for riches; many men have misjudged me so, to their doom. I ride because I would dwell in no land where strange creatures and their powers are unknown to me. My fighters, however, are simpler in their motives; your master’s treasury will be empty before they are truly satisfied. As ever, it will fall to me to retain their loyalty.”

  Grubbin bowed humbly and, with some final instructions given, made his preparations to leave. As he moved to depart, Rúga spoke once more. “We are unalike, slave, except in one ultimate respect: we are both survivors. It would serve you well to remember that nothing truly separates emperor and serf if both share the will to endure. What else matters in the end? The survivor may be dragged through thorns, he may be engulfed in smoke and flame, and he will emerge unscathed, because his impulse to prevail burns stronger. All the riches of the earth are no substitute for that.”

  Grubbin shuffled out of the tent and into the thickening darkness of night, Rúga’s parting words resonating in his mind like a deep and ominous gong.

  * * *

  The full story of Rúga Hawkhand’s journey to the Qalati Mountains would be long in the telling. With flowing mead and an eager audience it might be sung in sequence across a span of many evenings, and its listeners would go late to their beds to rehearse its many episodes in their drunken dreams. They would hear of how the warband went first to the holy Mundzuk Tree to speak their accustomed vows and to call forth the protection of the great Wild; they would see in dream the robed assassin of Nesh who shadowed the company’s camp for days, and finally met his end at the edge of Rúga’s knife; they would relive the brave sacrifice of young Ellac, who stole a guarded vessel with which the warband crossed the Foothill Fjords, but died from the wounds he was dealt. But the closing verses of the tale must here be sung in full.

  Rúga and his men reached the Qalati Mountains on a crisp morning of autumn. The snow upon the peaks had begun to thicken, and the warriors were glad for the heavy pelts and furs they had carried with them from the steppes. Far overhead the silhouette of Charaton, Rúga’s faithful hawk, could be seen wheeling in the ice-blue sky, his swift eyes ever attuned to his master’s whereabouts. He watched as the company trekked across sweeping heights and hushed valleys, and descended to his master’s hand when finally they entered a ravine of dark stone, carved by glaciers in ages past. At last they had reached the destination Grubbin had described.

  A deeper silence pervaded this new landscape, as though the nomads from the steppes were trespassing upon some solemn rite not of this world. The ravine had widened into a rocky plateau, devoid of vegetation and punctuated only by a broad pool of crystalline water. It was an oppressive place, more deathly than any tomb delved by men.

  Suddenly Charaton shrieked and tore himself away from Rúga’s gloved hand. The men quickly spotted what the hawk’s keen eyes had sighted first: a host of shadowy forms rising from the pool, like fumes from a deep-sea vent. Impossibly, they seemed to take on human shape, and wore on their nebulous limbs the wargear of bygone empires. Before Rúga could cry out, the spectres rushed forward with preternatural speed, as though blown by ill winds.

  Octar hurled his spear at the lead spectre, only to watch the weapon pass through its target and clatter impotently to the rocks behind. The nimble pickpocket Uldin fared little better, jinking to avoid the swing of a terrible vaporous arm and then loosing a stone from his sling that ricocheted harmlessly off his enemy’s heavily plated shoulder. Contradiction hung thick about these dreadful guardians, being here a diaphanous wisp, there a solid mass of ancient armour, immaterial yet momentous in their advance.

  Rúga found himself confronted by a towering mass of black smoke clad in a coat of antique mail. He ducked as the nightmarish thing made a lunge for his throat, then drove his spear-point clean through the rusted links guarding its flank. Dark fumes billowed from the sundered armour, but the attacker seemed unslowed by the wound and readied itself for another strike. Casting a quick glance to his comrades, Rúga saw that Denzic the bowman lay stricken on the ground, engulfed by a roiling cloud of evil. Meanwhile Charaton dived fearlessly in and out of the fray, but his beak and talons proved as ineffective as the warriors’ steel.

  Rúga’s battle-honed mind surveyed the arena in moments, noting how the spectral aggressors had quickly circled to cut off any retreat back through the ravine. The only egress was straight ahead, but that way lay nothing but the eerie pool from which the smoke-fiends had risen. Looking to the pool, Rúga saw that a strange light now glowed from somewhere in its depths, and that the water itself, previously glass-still, now bubbled restlessly. Could it be some aqueous portal to Arath’s domain?

  Again the terrors attacked, and again the human weapons claimed no victories. Denzic lay lifeless on the rocks, and more of the fighters looked soon to follow him, each now coughing and choking as the foes tightened their final suffocating embrace.

  “Into the water, steppe-men!” roared Rúga, conceding that defeat was imminent. “Swim to the light and remain masters of your fate; we will drink again together, whether it be in halls of men or gods!” With that he plunged into the pool, barely pausing to abandon his heaviest furs and armaments.

  The surviving warriors looked on with bewilderment as their chief vanished into the icy deeps, but their hesitation was brief as the black fog of doom rolled ever closer. All soon followed Rúga’s example, discarding their weightiest garments and
committing to what seemed a madman’s escape.

  At the water’s edge the ethereal victors stopped dead. A fell wind howled through the ravine and across the rocky plateau, and each of the vapours surrendered its body to the breeze, dissipating utterly into the cold mountain air. Vacant armour collapsed to the shoreline, and then all was still.

  * * *

  Rúga slowly opened his eyes. The sound of dripping water echoing on rock had roused him from a fey slumber. How long had he lain in the clutches of delirium, adrift in those strange realms of faery which should belong alone to the undines and the drowned? He had no memory of his descent into the mountain pool, nor of any agency that had plucked him from its chill waters.

  As Rúga’s vision returned he found that he lay in a narrow stone cell, barely large enough to contain him. A sickly yellow glow indicated that one end opened onto a larger chamber, and so he crawled out to face whatever fresh malevolence had brought him to this purgatory.

  He found himself in a circular atrium, its walls honeycombed with cells much like his own. A single arched doorway led off into darkness, while beside each cell a small lamp flickered, casting feverish shadows across the walls.

  Rúga pulled the nearest lamp from its fitting and used it to explore the room. He was reminded of the Catacombs of Sharazad, the labyrinthine tombs cut into the volcanic ash beneath that city to house its wealthiest dead. He had plundered those graves frequently as a boy, daring to venture where no other street urchin would. But in these alcoves there was no sign of glittering grave goods to loot; only the dormant forms of his comrades, each in his own gloomy sepulchre. What armour and weaponry they had taken with them into the water was nowhere to be seen, and all now wore grey linen shrouds as though primed for burial.