by Cebelius
As the flame guttered, Yuri passed it to a new torch, and saw that they were coming to an archway with a large wooden door that had a well-wrought iron latch. It was of course closed, with no visible hinges.
They had encountered closed doors at every turn as they moved through Svartheim. Wooden doors like this one invariably gave way to Laina's ax. Twice they had encountered stone barriers that had required Asturial's magical might to get through, but Yuri was willing to wager none of the hobgoblin leadership had ever considered the possibility that they would have to mount a defense this deep inside their citadel.
"Asturial, the shield. Get ready."
No one said anything, and Yuri's warning was essentially unnecessary. Everyone knew there would be a fight on the other side of this door. They would be ready and waiting, and Asturial would not be able to simply fling a fireball in first to disrupt things as she had in the past.
There was a sconce at the door that had a previously lit torch already in it, though it looked like it had been there for years, if not decades. Yuri reached up and lit it for more light as Laina unlimbered the Ax of the Great Plains.
Euryale nocked an arrow and took a few steps back while Yuri got behind Asturial with his back to the wall. Twisted crouched just next to the shield and shifted to her wolf form, tensed to charge.
Laina's stroke was straight up and down right through the center of the door. The wood of the crossbeam beyond gave in along with the rest and half the door dropped a half inch and fell askew. She took a step back and, using the head of her ax like a battering ram, smashed the tilted half of the door the rest of the way off the now broken bar as from the other side someone calmly said, "Fire."
Crossbow bolts flew through the opening, most thunking into Asturial's shield. One caught Laina on the side and she bellowed in pain and staggered back, keeping hold of her ax as she clutched at the bloody gash the bolt had carved into her.
Unable to worry about her in the moment, Yuri followed Asturial's charge and with his torch held high he grimly took in the scene.
Two rows of hobgoblins stood before them, the front rank held iron tower shields and those beyond were reloading their crossbows.
Asturial charged full-force into the shield wall, shattering the formation with brute strength. Twisted flung herself through the opening, a blood-spattered ball of teeth and fury.
Her presence disrupted the firing line, and Yuri, Asturial, and even Laina waded in, swinging, thrusting, killing.
All the while Euryale sent arrows into the fray, and it was only her efforts that kept the small party from being completely surrounded and overwhelmed.
Laina cleared a space in the center of the room and her ax stayed in motion, trailing blood behind as she cleaved shields, armor, flesh, and bone with equal facility.
As Yuri fought with a sword in one hand and a firebrand in the other, he saw the leader draw a blade with a golden hilt as Twisted killed the last of the lightly armored crossbowmen and turned her attention to him, snarling as she shifted to her upright form and stalked her next target.
He didn't see what happened as in the next few moments he was entirely absorbed with the task of killing his opponents while not dying himself.
When he was able to look again, Twisted was down. Horribly so. Her legs and arms had been separated from her torso, which lay face up in a pool of blood as the hobgoblin turned to face Asturial.
The dragon was charging. Before he could join himself, he was forced to leap into another combat with two other hobs closing in on Laina's back.
The minotress had taken several cuts and was bleeding heavily from wounds in her thigh, side, and a long diagonal cut across her back. She simply couldn't face in every direction at once, and Euryale had problems of her own. Two hobs had converged on the gorgon and were in the process of smashing her repeatedly with their maces.
Euryale was doing her best to retaliate, but the sheer brute force of the weapons was enough to keep her disoriented and her snakes had yet to score hits on anything but armor plate.
Yuri rammed his sword up under the backplate of the closest hob attacking Laina and lunged past, claws flicking out as he jabbed them into another hob's throat as that one slashed at him with a hand ax. Yuri jerked the hob he had impaled into the way of the strike, and the second hob burbled as blood welled up from his torn throat.
Still on his feet, the hobgoblin jerked his ax free, swapped it to his other hand for a swing toward Yuri's unprotected side. The blow might have ended him had Laina not turned to chop him almost entirely in half.
Yanking his sword from the dying hob, Yuri nodded at Laina and then jerked his head back toward Euryale. He didn't speak, didn't want to warn the hobs what was coming, but Laina nodded grimly and strode toward the two standing over the gorgon, who was now on the ground and unable to muster any resistance as the hobs kept her suppressed with brutal blows from mace and hammer.
Yuri turned to join the fight against what he assumed to be the Halfrekkr, only to find that he would be standing alone.
Asturial was dismembered as well, though unlike Twisted — who still howled piteously beyond the heavily armored hobgoblin — it was obvious the dragon proxy was dead.
The Halfrekkr's armor was supremely well-crafted and lined with sigils that glowed blue and purple in the flickering torchlight. His sword was of a design that looked to be from another time, ancient, simple, yet obviously effective. The golden hilt practically shone, and the sword itself gleamed, mirror bright and unblemished.
Knowing he needed to stall for time, Yuri asked a question to which he already knew the answer.
"Halfrekkr?"
"You know me?"
The hob didn't pause as he spoke, striding toward Yuri with sword at the ready and a target shield in his other hand. Even the shield seemed enchanted — its rim covered in arcane markings.
"It was you that wiped out the people in the valley," Yuri said, feinting with his sword only to draw it back and thrust with his torch as the golden-hilted sword flicked out to block. It would have been more natural to use the shield, but the hob was obviously relying on the sword's magic to disarm his opponents before he cut them apart.
Asturial's corpse had told him not to engage blade to blade, for laying next to her remains was his old sword. It had been severed as though it were a mown blade of grass.
"Yes. I destroyed Torp as well. Who sent you? Tell me, and I will make your death painless."
"Marion."
"Never heard of her."
Yuri showed his teeth, circling. The hob took the bait and circled with him. His tusks showed as he smiled, a pleasant expression that simply did not fit the hobgoblin's brutal face.
"You missed her in Lund," Yuri snarled. "She led us here."
"Fair enough," Halfrekkr said with an uncaring shrug. "Here you will die. The wolf-bitch will serve as entertainment for favored soldiers. The dragon can be dealt with in time. Alone she will not prove difficult to subdue. Your head will be spitted and adorn the feast hall while your body is roasted and dispensed. High praise."
As he spoke, the Halfrekker took a quick half-step forward and thrust. It was an efficient, well-executed move, one that Yuri tried deflecting as he threw himself to one side.
He almost made it.
The torch parted as though it were made of balsa, and the golden sword slid through the corner of Yuri's breastplate and the ribs beyond it before ripping sideways out of his body.
The agony was intense, but Yuri had suffered injuries like this before. Mila had always been there to save him, there to see to it that all he had to do was win the fight, and he would survive.
Now though, out of position and off-balance, his counter rang off the Halfrekkr's shield, and he easily swiped his sword across Yuri's own enchanted blade, which simply fell in two pieces.
"Last chance for a quick death," the hob said as he brandished his weapon easily, herding Yuri toward a wall as the tiger-man drew Marion's fillet knife from th
e sheath at his belt.
It was a practically useless weapon. It could not parry the Halfrekkr's enchanted blade, and would not penetrate his armor.
All this passed through his mind even as he felt rough stone behind him. He glared defiance at his enemy.
"That sword is the only reason you stand," Yuri growled.
"It's power has a price. I will make use of your wolf-bitch myself as compensation for paying it," the hob replied as he thrust again, burying the mystic blade in Yuri's guts.
It was a lethal wound, but not immediately, and they both knew it. Halfrekkr withdrew the sword as he said, "You had your chance to die quickly. Now you can lay there bleeding out as you watch me fuck your bitch."
Yuri was careful to keep his gaze fixed on the hobgoblin in front of him, locking them with the darkly glimmering eyes of his foe so he wouldn't give away the swing he may just have given his life to set up.
Somehow, Halfrekkr sensed it coming anyway.
He whirled, Tyrfing swirling up into the air to block the blow. Had he used his shield instead, he might have lived.
But the sword in his hands would cut through anything, and as Laina's ax came for his head with all the force of the muscled titan behind it, Tyrfing sliced cleanly through the haft of the legendary weapon.
The massive double-bladed head — already on course — flew on, but it twisted. Instead of burying itself in the hob's skull, it smashed him to his knees, leaving him dazed and bloody as it bounced away.
Yuri mustered the last of his strength and lunged, wrapping a hand around the Halfrekkr's face and yanking it up to expose his throat, which he cut to the bone with the fillet knife left for him by a woman who had begged with her last words for vengeance.
Halfrekkr gurgled, but Yuri wasn't done. He switched his grip on the knife, jammed it into the hob's eye socket, and wrenched, snapping the blade off inside the other's brain.
The hobgoblin commander fell still, and Yuri lay atop him in a spreading pool comprised of both men's blood, unable to muster the energy through his pain and weariness to move.
Laina sagged to her knees before him, bleeding from more cuts than he could count. She hauled him off the corpse and propped him up by the pack on his back.
"You okay?" she asked as she looked into his eyes.
"Dying actually," he said, though he said it with a smile. "You did well."
"Sure, only cost me a legend. My own people may never forgive me." Laina said drily as she reached past Yuri and into the pack he still wore.
Yuri's laughter was wet as he managed, "Fuck 'em. They never treated you right anyway."
Laina smiled.
The torch the Halfrekkr had cut apart was dying, and the light from the one in the hallway barely reached them, but she didn't need to search around to find what she needed. Magic bags were handy that way.
She pressed a bottle into his hand and said, "Hope you don't mind if I don't wait. I gotta get over to Twisted."
She got to her feet as she turned, then swayed and pitched forward onto her face.
Euryale tried to catch the big minotress but only managed to cushion her fall and wound up beneath her, cursing viciously as she crawled out from under the unconscious bovine titan to take the bottle of her milk the rest of the way to Twisted.
Yuri was in too much pain to smile, but he felt the satisfaction as he uncorked Laina's milk and drank it. He had no idea if it would be enough to save him, but at least it took the pain away.
He sat still, propped up by the pack on his back, watching the dimly flickering fire of the torch dying as it lay on the floor across a room practically covered with bodies and gore.
He thought about the trip back through Svartheim. About the goblins and hobgoblins probably still left alive to challenge them. He thought about the fact that they were probably pretty close to wherever the real treasures of this place were kept. Close as that wealth might be, it may as well be on the moon. They had neither the time nor the resources to retrieve them.
Then Yuri's eyes fell on the crumpled form of the Halfrekkr, and he wondered how much it would cost to have magical armor size-adjusted to fit him.
Marcus, Mila and he had always sold such artifacts found in dungeons up until now to finance the quest ... but he figured with everything that had happened, he deserved a little something.
His thoughts drifted then, and as he rested, he quietly said, "Taste vengeance, Marion. Rest in peace."
24
Twisted Love
Yuri took one step after another, his mind essentially blank. Behind him, wood rasped over stone, screaming their presence to anyone who might be left alive to hear in Svartheim.
He knew they hadn't gotten all the goblins, and probably not even all the hobgoblins. Perhaps not even close, but staying put was by far the bigger risk, so they trudged on.
The tiger-man labored under a makeshift travois he had constructed from rope and the splintered remains of the door they'd chopped through to get to the Halfrekkr.
On it, Laina was passed out. He had given her one of the precious healing potions they had found in Monsoon, but though her wounds had closed, she had been unable to walk, unable even to stand. It was clear whatever supernatural endurance the ax had bequeathed to her ended with its destruction. The pieces of the Ax of the Great Plains and the armor the Halfrekkr had worn were in Euryale's belt pouch, along with the cursed sword, Tyrfing, and the Halfrekkr's head.
Yuri would present the head, along with Marion's final plea, as proof to convince the herd leaders to move on this place before the survivors could reset and rebuild. Like their goblin cousins, hobgoblins were remarkably fecund, and matured in only a few years.
Though Halfrekkr died with Tyrfing in his hand, they found it sheathed, and left it so as they put it away. Euryale carried it because if something happened to them now, she stood the best chance of eventually making her way back.
Twisted padded along in her wolf form next to him, head hung low. She had eaten ravenously once Laina's milk had given her enough to get her limbs back, but had been required to shift into her four-legged form to manage even that, and all four limbs were completely devoid of fur. She growled or whined whenever he looked at her, clearly mortified about the way it made her look. Though she'd worn not a stitch of clothing the entire time he'd known her, she acted now as though she were naked in a crowd, and it obviously humiliated her. She was just as tired as the rest of them, and even more stressed.
Under her current circumstances he could never ask her to shift and help with the travois. She was so malnourished and weak at this point, she might not even have been able to lift it anyway.
In truth Yuri felt at every step that he was about to drop. He barely managed to hold the torch he had in hand far enough away from his body to keep his fur from singeing. An iron will was all that kept one foot landing in front of the other as he leaned into the crude harness he'd fashioned.
The pack was slung across Laina's torso, and would hopefully serve as some protection if they were attacked from behind.
Euryale came and went, ranging forward, then back, doing her best to keep threats at bay. Each time she passed by him, Yuri saw how her snakes drooped, and she walked with her arms limp at her sides.
She might be immortal, but even she needed sleep. They all did.
Asturial had yet to return, and Yuri had no idea when she would. He knew it was only a question of time, but she had been at the limits of her endurance as well, and the last time her proxy had been killed it had taken her hours to rejoin them.
Yuri's goal was to get to the heavy stone block they had slid into place to block those below from coming up. He suspected there were other means to get down to the lower levels, but searching for them would be suicidal. His only hope at this point would be that — realizing they were leaving — the remaining denizens of Svartheim would steer clear on their own.
So far that had proven a vain hope, as the occasional statues Yuri passed of goblins and hobg
oblins proved.
If he were forced to fight, he would draw his greatsword from his pack and hope for the best, but at this point he'd have been hard-pressed to kill a goblin. Twisted had already killed two of the nasty little men that had tried sneaking up on them, but her ability to fight was compromised as well, and if they ran into serious trouble it would likely be the end of them.
Yuri pressed on, putting his hope and faith in Euryale.
As they navigated a hall filled with corpses he set his foot down in something gooey and wet, and it slid out from under him. He fell painfully to his knees and his eyes shut tight as his tail fluffed in reaction, but he did not cry out. The weight of the travois seemed to be trying to crush him, and he wanted nothing more in that moment than to just lie down.
Instead, he got up. His movements were automatic. He didn't think, because if he thought, he would quit. He couldn't afford to quit. People depended on him; looked to him for strength.
Unlike the travois, that weight did not crush him. It lifted him up, sent him staggering forward. If he died here, by all the Powers, he'd die on his feet.
This part of their journey in had taken almost two hours that had been filled with constant fighting and struggle. Now it was mostly struggle, and as he lit another torch he knew that once they reached the stairway down, they would have to stop and wait either for Asturial to rejoin them, or for Laina to recover enough to help him shift the stone, something he wasn't sure they could do even with their combined strength.
Yuri briefly wondered why Euryale had been so insistent that they cover the way down, but she wasn't around to ask, and he was too tired to keep the thought in his head.
They reached a stair, and Yuri groaned as he laboriously began to take the travois down. Every time the wood thumped down another step the dull ache in his shoulders flared into sharp agony, but he kept at it. Fifteen steps took him almost that many minutes, and then he trudged on.
"I'm sorry," Laina mumbled from behind him, probably woken by the jolting ride.
