Swords of Steel Omnibus

by Howie K Bentley et al.

  “To what end?”

  Caleb hefted the gleaming arcane sword, marvelling once again at its polished, rune etched blade and its ornate quillons which were fashioned in the form of two mighty silver wings.

  “Mayhap this?”

  “Mayhap you,” Drustan replied, his craggy brow arching.

  “Let them come alongside and grapple, damn it all!” Caleb said, tightening his grip upon the gleaming sword. “’Tis the fiend from my fever-dreams who strides that deck. I would have hard words with him. But first, we’ll tear a few more holes in her black hull!”

  “In the jungle you said you knew our next port of call,” Drustan said. “Where do the visions drive us next?”

  “Where no chart or navigator may guide us, and perhaps where I alone may tread,” growled Blackthorne, gazing grimly at the black ship. “Into the belly of the beast!”

  * * *

  On the forecastle of the darkling galleon, Maalech Xul hefted his great black sword and scanned the heavily armed carrack maneuvering before him.

  “There you are!” he growled as he discerned Caleb Blackthorne standing defiantly upon the quarterdeck, silver blade in hand. “The hunt draws to an end, at last!”

  The dark giant’s chitinous armour glistened with a sheen of salt spray, his great black cloak billowing like the leathern wings of a colossal bat. Sea water dripped from the twisted maws of his skull shaped pauldrons, giving the disquieting impression that the leering effigies were salivating at the prospect of the impending clash.

  Another barrage of cannonballs thundered from the Starfire’s gunports, shrieking towards the ghost-ship like a swarm of ireful ironclad hornets. This salvo struck home with a deafening cacophony of rending wood and screaming metal, shattering the foremast, the mainyard and a vast swathe of the quarterdeck in a shower of blackened shards. A score of silent, pallid mariners were rent horrifically asunder by the volley, their limbs torn from their decaying bodies and their vulpine skulls splitting to spill their noisome contents to the ravaged deck planks. Dark green ichor exploded forth from the riven corpses, spattering the vessel’s barnacle encrusted planks like a malignant and foetid tide.

  And the black ship sailed inexorably on.

  “Blast this cursed vessel apart board by board if you must, human,” Xul hissed. “I shall yet bear thee to the Black Spire!”

  The armoured titan secured his huge horned helm and watched as the stygian galleon’s jagged prow clove the sea like a ravening shark, bringing the vessel ever closer into position to flank its tenacious quarry. “Stand ready to sling hooks,” Xul thundered above the rattle of the ragged sails and the roar of the churning sea. “Kill all you can, but Blackthorne is mine alone!”

  * * *

  “Prepare to repel boarders!” boomed Caleb as the black ship hove near. “Courage lads… these fiends are the devil’s progeny, but they’ll still fall to steel and shot! Now, stand fast and send them back to the briny vaults!”

  “Man those breech-loaders on the rail!” Quartermaster O’Rourke barked. A score of men leaped instantly to the swivel-mounted bronze fowlers on the gunwale and made ready to fire.

  Drustan slowly bared his great notched cutlass and smiled, the expression wholly devoid of mirth. Glancing towards the aft of the ship, he saw the young marksman Malachi take position by the mizzen mast, his long matchlock rifle poised.

  The Nubian bladesman Kattikouda crouched by the capstan like a hunting panther, his twin shortswords with their rhino horn hilts twirling in his hands, his claw-raked thigh bound with a filthy linen bandage.

  The blond bearded reaver Gunnar stood at the forecastle, his deadly curved axe glimmering in the rays of the setting sun. The Northman still wore his scale-mail cuirass, steadfastly ignoring the dire wounds he had suffered during the battle with the great white ape.

  The black garbed assassin Ryo was perched upon the foreyard like a shadowy bird of prey, his razor-edged katana with its shark-skin hilt agleam like a single silver talon.

  Many mariners waited at the bulwarks, blades and guns ready. Others had climbed to the rigging and the spars with their weapons honed and primed for combat.

  Caleb Blackthorne dragged his basket-hilted broadsword from its scabbard and rested the blade upon his shoulder. In his other hand he still held the coruscant rune-etched blade from the island shrine. Grinning wolfishly, he vowed both blades would soon drink deep of the impure blood of this deathless assembly of gangrenous fiends who now dared waylay his ship. The men of the Starfire were the veterans of countless sea-duels from the White Cliffs of Dover to the black volcanic crags of the southern isles, and there was nothing that sailed upon or swam beneath the seven seas that these doughty sea-wolves feared!

  The black ship loomed ever closer, close enough that the vacant, staring eyes of its corrupted charnel-crew could clearly be seen, and several of those vile mariners crouching in its rigging were now hurling twisted iron hooks attached to slimy ropes.

  “Give them one more for good measure!” bellowed Caleb gleefully.

  The demi-cannons on the Starfire’s larboard gun-deck thundered their martial report once more, and two hundred pounds of iron, limestone and flint tore into the rotting boards of the black galleon with a sublimely deafening cacophony. A billowing storm of smoke enveloped both decks and a shower of wood, metal and worm-eaten flesh rained down like a sepulchral tempest.

  With a titanic grating din, the freeboards of the two ships met, the wood grinding together like the clash of two great primal predators from the dawn of time. The crack of the timbers was ear-splitting, as the spars and rigging of the twin behemoths were wrenched and riven, splintering and snapping free from the shackles of the masts and decks. Iron missiles whistled down from the spars as the black ship’s mariners struck like baleful shadows, leaping from their vile vessel to befoul the deck of the English carrack. The fearless corsairs at the Starfire’s bulwarks met the onslaught with a purifying storm of bright steel, raking and rending the aberrant fiends as they pounced hissing from the rigging. Cutlasses and pikes clove grey flesh and clattered on the gunwales, while matchlocks and breech-loaders hurled hot iron death into the gangrenous, nightmare tide of onrushing hell.

  Caleb drove his basket hilted blade into the pallid face of a snarling fiend as he felt his ship rock beneath his buckskin boots. The cankerous mariner crumpled beneath the blow and Blackthorne spun to parry a cutlass strike from another boarder before sweeping his silver longsword upwards to cleave the creature from its hip to its sternum. The ravaged body was rent in twain by the mighty strike and fell to the deck in two rotting halves, its darksome entrails erupting to writhe upon the viscera-strewn planks like a mass of steaming eels. A vile face twisted in a rictus grin suddenly reared up before him, and Caleb swept the feculent head from its bony shoulders amidst a torrent of dark green blood. Embedding the point of his basket hilted blade momentarily in the carrack’s deck, Caleb tore his snaphaunce from his belt and with a thunderous crack and a plume of smoke discharged the weapon into the decomposing face of another shambling fiend. The creature’s head instantly exploded in a noxious shower of black ichor and yellowed bone, the decapitated body collapsing to the boards in a tangle of spindly limbs and filthy rags. Throwing the pistol aside, Blackthorne swiftly unsheathed his slender dagger and hurled the honed blade unerringly into the milky, clouded eye of a bloated purulent form which was clambering awkwardly over the gunwale. The creature’s malformed head snapped backwards and it plummeted into the churning sea between the two embattled vessels. Caleb then took up his sword once more and leaped again into the thick of the fray.

  All around him, the foetid mariners were falling to the bright steel and withering shot of the carrack’s crew. Gunnar’s pitiless axe-blade was black with gore, and Kattikouda’s short-swords struck again and again like twin cobras. Malachi’s matchlock and snap-lock found their marks unerringly, and Ryo’s searing katana wove a scintillant and graceful tapestry of death. Drustan clove the legs from one
undead mariner and split the head of another from its crown to its chin, a slurry of maggot-wreathed grey brain matter blossoming from the splintered skull.

  “Give no quarter, wolves of the sea!” Blackthorne bellowed. “Drive these cursed demons back to their shark-haunted graves!”

  And then, like a colossal ireful shadow, Maalech Xul leaped from the rail of the ghost-ship to the deck of the Starfire, his midnight cloak billowing, his vast curved sword whirling.

  “Caleb Blackthorne!” he roared, his guttural voice tomb-cold. “I have come for thee!”

  Two mariners fell instantly to that black sword, their bodies seared to red ruin by its cruelly serrated ebon steel. A matchlock ball suddenly impacted Xul’s great horned helm with a resonant crack, only to ricochet harmlessly from the blackened crown.

  Caleb turned solemnly to face the armoured giant, his dripping blades poised.

  “You,” he growled. “The spectre from the dreamscape, finally made flesh. Long have I awaited this meeting.”

  Dark laughter welled in Xul’s throat and a crimson light shone balefully from the eye-slits of his helm. “Indeed, human? Come, then. Let us commune at last!”

  The silver sword met the black blade with a resounding metallic clarion and a blinding shower of rutilant sparks. Blackthorne’s steel suddenly blazed with cerulean energy, the hilt thrumming ever more intensely in his grasp. In response, Xul’s blade shone with a fiery green glow, viridescent tendrils of witch-power crackling along its length. The two weapons became locked in a grinding, relucent contest of arcane might, each razor edge shrieking and keening its eldritch defiance. The ageless swords of light and shadow, meeting again in their time-lost battle of good and evil!

  “I’ve faced that cursed sword before,” Xul rumbled. “Long before your ancestors crawled from the primordial mire. The soul of its former wielder now lies sundered and scattered to the abyss.”

  “I’ve seen you die in my dreams, devil,” Blackthorne spat. “I mean to take your head again this day!”

  Snarling, Xul drew back for another ruinous blow and Blackthorne arced the silver blade up for the parry, the resultant clash sending a shockwave of pain along the length of his sword-arm. Desperately, Caleb swept his basket hilted broadsword into Xul’s chitinous cuirass, the strike rebounding harmlessly from the surface of the blackened metal.

  The dark giant hissed and forced his opponent’s auroral blade down, pressing his inhuman weight against Caleb’s guard.

  “You are no match for me,” Xul growled, the crimson embers behind his helmet’s eye-slits blazing brighter.

  Gritting his teeth, a sheen of cold sweat upon his brow, Blackthorne felt himself being pushed inexorably down by the preternatural strength of the armoured fiend. The two blades hissed and crackled with arcane fire, bright sparks blossoming from the steel. Lances of agony tore at Caleb’s arm and shoulder. He fell slowly to one knee, an invisible and oppressive wall of cold spectral force hammering pitilessly at his body.

  “I am not so easily bested,” Blackthorne rasped.

  Summoning the final vestiges of his fading might, Caleb roared an oath and drove the point of his basket-hilted broadsword viciously into the area between Xul’s cuirass and pauldron, ramming a full eight inches of steel into his foe’s inhuman flesh. With a bestial howl, the dark giant fell back, gouts of dark blue blood erupting from his riven armour. Blackthorne instantly leaped to his feet and hammered the silvern sword’s edge into Xul’s midriff, the incandescent steel scoring a great furrow in the jagged cuirass. Blue flames exploded from the scarred breastplate and Xul stumbled backwards several paces. Pressing his advantage, Caleb lunged forward and swept the silver sword in a lateral arc towards the giant’s helm, seeking to cleave the beast’s head from his body. But with malefic speed, the black blade flashed up to meet the blow. A sound akin to a thunderclap rose above the tumult of the surrounding battle, and a cocoon of searing light instantly enveloped the two combatants like a lucent shroud. Trapping his foe’s shining blade and pushing it down, Xul’s taloned gauntlet suddenly lashed out to grasp Caleb’s forehead, and a bright green glow abruptly flared where the riveted black iron met the captain’s flesh. Instantly, Blackthorne’s knees buckled and his broadsword clattered to the deck, his body slumping insensate into the grip of his darksome opponent. Swiftly, Xul scabbarded his black sword and wrested the silver blade from Blackthorne’s lifeless grip, securing it at his belt. Then, he swept Caleb’s frozen, immobile body effortlessly up onto his great shoulder.

  “Steel is not the only tool at my disposal, human.” he rumbled. “We have an appointment with my mistress… one which we must keep.”

  From a compartment in his gauntlet, Xul produced a small black stone which sported a lattice-work of green veins running across its polished surface like a sinistrous spider’s web. Raising the jewel before him, he hissed a sibilant incantation in a long-dead arcane tongue. Instantly, a shimmering portal manifested before him, rending the air like a gaping, glowing wound in the fabric of reality. Beyond the eldritch gateway, a myriad radiant hues swirled and roiled like a vast spectral maelstrom. A tremendous howling sound accompanied the sorcerous threshold, like the rushing of some fell, unholy gale. The dark giant stepped towards the pulsing portal, still bearing the motionless body of Caleb Blackthorne.

  Suddenly, in a blinding flash of folded steel, the adamantine blade of Ryo’s katana swept cruelly down upon Xul’s outstretched arm. With a clamorous crack and a plume of acrid smoke, the blade severed the armoured limb cleanly and the arm fell to the blood-stained deck, still bearing the green jewel in its gauntleted grasp. Xul roared in pain and rage, the inhuman sound terrifying in its bestial ferocity. With torrents of dark blue blood erupting from the terrible wound, Xul surged headlong into the arcane portal, disappearing wholly across its shimmering threshold. In an instant, the glowing doorway disappeared, contracting like a fuliginous iris until nothing but a writhing tendril of green mist remained to mark its passing.

  All about the Starfire’s deck, the vile undead mariners abruptly collapsed, their ancient weapons clattering to the boards, their ankylosed frames crumpling motionless to become nothing more than piles of tattered rags and muculent bones. The clamour of battle swiftly subsided and the carrack’s corsairs watched in astonishment as their insidious foes fell before them. Scant seconds later, every single one of the ruined corpses was swathed in a shroud of greenish light, all of the grisly remains swiftly disappearing to leave naught but a fine alabastrine powder which was quickly dispersed by the whispering sea wind.

  “The captain!” Drustan boomed as he loped to where the severed arm lay oozing upon the deck. “I could not reach him in time to give aid!”

  “This blow was all I could render,” Ryo said, kicking at the rent limb. “The throngs of the kyonshi kept my steel busy.”

  Suddenly, the air was filled with the din of rending wood and twisting metal, and the mariners turned to see the great black ship begin to shake and judder violently. In an instant, the vessel became wreathed in a viridescent glow, its masts and boards splintering and crackling as if being crushed in the vice grip of a colossal unseen hand. Moments later the galleon was gone, the azure sea churning and bubbling where once its fell keel had floated.

  Scowling, quartermaster O’Rourke picked up the severed arm and gingerly prised the green and black jewel from its dead grasp.

  “Sorcery!” he spat. “I saw the devil use this stone to open the witch-portal!”

  Gunnar moved forward to peer at the gently glowing rock, his scale-mail cuirass slick with black blood and viscera. “Where did that fiend of Nifelheim take him?”

  “And can we follow?” growled Kattikouda, wiping his befouled blades. “Loyalty is the watch-cry of this crew,” Drustan said. “Each of us owes his life ten times over to Caleb Blackthorne. If there is even the remotest chance we can travel the same path to retrieve the captain, we are honour bound to try, no matter where that infernal path may lead.”

 
; Malachi carefully took the stone from the quartermaster and held it aloft, gazing at the crystalline green veins which sparkled faintly in the light of the setting sun. “This is the key to opening that cursed door,” he said. “All we need to do is fathom how to use it.”

  * * *

  Caleb Blackthorne awoke to find himself lying prone on a small islet of black volcanic rock surrounded by a silent, wine-dark sea. Shedding the last vestiges of his sorcery induced slumber, he rose slowly to his feet and discovered that his wrists were shackled by a pair of lucent green manacles which seemed as incorporeal as mist, but which no amount of straining could serve to loosen in the slightest. Gazing upwards he beheld a vast blue sky devoid of clouds, boasting a baleful burning sun which glared down upon him like a single searing eye.

  “Good. You have awoken,” came a sepulchral, ice cold voice.

  Caleb spun to see Maalech Xul standing several yards behind him, the winged silver sword secured at his belt. Dark blue blood pulsed steadily from the cloven stump of the giant’s elbow where his chitinous black couter had evidently been sheared clean through.

  A wry grin curled Caleb’s lips. “Lose something?”

  Xul levelled the point of his serrated black sword at Blackthorne’s head and strode menacingly towards him. “Silence!” he barked, an edge of vexation in his voice. “You find yourself in the domain of my mistress. Come now and meet your destiny. Behold the Black Spire!”

  Caleb turned to gaze out across the basaltic islet, swiftly discerning a narrow black bridge which stretched over the motionless water and on to the distant horizon. Beyond the dark causeway’s farthest extent, rippling and shimmering in the heat-haze, he beheld a vast cyclopean structure which towered skyward like a sinister talon of smooth black stone. The stygian spire was colossal, easily two hundred feet tall, and at its pyramidal pinnacle was a gigantic green orb which pulsed and burned with a fell viridescent fire.