The Shield of Hannar (Runehammer Novels Book 2) Page 11
This hell’s-light glowed brighter now in Hannar’s eyes, but as he turned to engage Akram again, Kray found his strength.
He slid on one hip across the fray, evading Elisa and Mars, who had re-engaged the boy. At Hannar’s side was he then, and his longhammer shot out like a spear. The haft tangled into Hannar’s right arm, between him and Wall. Kray braced, ducked, then leapt overhead like a pole vaulter. The length of his hammer twisted into Hannar’s elbow with a weird leverage, and Wall was cast free of the boy’s grasp, landing twenty paces away with a bang. Kray found his feet, but Hannar tracked his movement with empty eyes and brought Angrid to bear.
The lapis-etched sword met its mark, and cut Kray from stomach to sternum. The wound was shallow, but terribly ragged. Kray sprawled, just as Elisa brought another blow. Her sword shattered on Hannar’s back like a twig on a rock. At this, she stared wide-eyed.
Her pause gave Hannar a tiny window, and he reached up to her. His hand barely reached her neck, but with a little leap he made the mark, and crushed her throat in his empty hand. Landing, he pulled her down by the neck, and her face turned purple with strain and airless agony. Akram rushed in, locking up the boy’s sword arm, and Ruin came down on Angrid with a great glowing arc of steel, disarming the boy.
But their hopes were dashed as fast as they had been raised. Disarmed entirely, Hannar seemed unfazed. He cast Akram off like a nuisance, knocking the King’s helm into the black chasm. An arc of reddish lightning jerked and flashed from the Red Captain to Hannar, renewing his power again. Elisa he twisted and flung like a ragdoll. Her massive, chiseled frame tumbled across the room with crippling force, knocked senseless. Then Mars was kicked in the chest, and slid backward. The boy was unbeatable!
“Release him, demon!” Anna screamed, but the din of rumbling death and otherworldly power was louder than any earthly noise. The Red Captain’s arms were raised, and raw power arced and flashed all around him, connecting the abyss, the walls, Hannar, and the wizard himself in a webwork of white-hot plasma.
Akram surveyed the battle like a general. Elisa was unconscious, the Elite lay dead. Kray was barely able to stand, and Mars slowly rose to wage another strike. There was simply no way around the boy to stop the wizard from his hideous work. So Akram, the Sun Stone, set his toes, and eyed his only hope: Angrid. The blade lay to his left, Hannar was at his right. He ducked, feinted, and as Mars came flying in with Ruin on high, the King made for the sword.
In his regal hand that blade rose, and he joined the fight again. This time he made for a crippling cut at the boy’s boots, but the strike bounced away. Ruin had Hannar tangled for a moment, but then Hannar broke Mars’ hand with sheer force and had the warrior at his mercy. Akram struck again like thunder, but such was the enchantment upon Hannar that it had little effect.
No words of bards or jesters will ever truly capture how terrible was that melee...
The beam of energy that connected Hannar and the Red Captain intensified, and he began to totally overpower the two dwarves with blazing fury. Then happened something that will be told of for all time: Anna, shieldmaiden of the Greenway, found her courage, and strode forth.
She took up Wall, bracing her arm into what was left of the leather grips, took three great running strides, and skidded to a halt at her goal. Between the Red Captain and Hannar she stood, and raised Wall like a great blockade. This brought her directly into the river of fire that gave Hannar his demonic might, and the energy met Wall with a crackling flash of death. Her hair caught fire, her left arm was burnt skinless in an instant, and she screamed.
“Release himmmm!” she howled. Bits of metal, bone, and molten flesh sprayed around her, but the beam was broken. Into her feet she leaned with strength known only to the immortals who first walked the world, and held fast. The shield was ripped to dust, and she held her hands up in the lightning. In a split second her arms were skeletal things, fingers tearing away like ashes in a storm.
With this Hannar stumbled forward, and the fury left him. He smoldered, and fell to his knees. Akram and Mars were set free from their grapple. They shook off the pain of a dozen cracked bones. Akram used Angrid to lift his weight and face the scene, horrified. Mars struggled to focus his eyes, and was still trying to catch his breath.
This was a defining moment, when a king is made legend. For, unafraid and without wrath, he stepped forward and raised that terrible sword like a beacon. Into the blinding arc of energy he lunged, at Anna’s side. The sword deflected the demonic power into scattered refractions of death, but it was beyond too late. Anna was no more.
The glowing wreckage of her form crumpled backward, armless, with little more than a cinder where her noble head once was. This at last drew the ire of Aras, the red wizard of Iridess. He turned at his rocky perch, eyes blazing and voice like a dire god. Some terrible force was he readying to unleash, but Mars was the faster of them, and meant to make this moment count.
The dwarf blasted forward with a wild howl, past Akram, past the ashen corpse of Anna, wife to his closest friend, and as Hela looked on from her stone effigy, he made good on his heroic blood. Ruin he brought up like a lance, and there was no stopping him. The blade shot forward, upward, outward. At the tip of that rocky knife he skewered the Red Captain like a boar on a spit. The Red Captain screamed with some eldritch, unholy, echoing roar, and the energies of his conjuration convulsed and sputtered. He did not bend, or go limp, but he slowly, with dreadful menace, brought his gaze to Mars Gulgynn.
Aras reached out with one burnt hand, grasping the three-handed hilt of Ruin. In his grip, Mars’ hand bones turned to pulp, and he fell to one side. The blade was still planted wholly in the wizard’s chest, and time seemed to stop.
Then, with slow motion and the abject horror of evil unimagined, he drew the blade out. Hand over hand on the endless blade he worked. The steel was sheathed with an even, glistening crimson coat. At last, as all those still alive were transfixed with shock, the blade was revealed and lifted. It was stained red, but a bright, hellish red all folding in swirls and spirals. It was no longer Ruin. This blade was forged in the belly of a demon, and drawn forth to end the world. Red Fang was it called from that day forward.
But the names and history of great swords is the province of historians, and those brave warriors still breathing wasted not a single gasp in the awe of it all.
Before Akram, now leaping like a lion, could reach the wizard, Mars had regained his wits. His hands were purple mush, but his valor was still untarnished. The Red Captain’s rapture of power had distracted him, and there was a tiny window of opportunity. Mars thought not of himself, or of fear, or of agony. He braced both boots behind him, then rose from his knees. All the might of his thighs he brought to bear, pushing like an elephant. With arms and elbows, he tangled the Red Captain in a clumsy grapple, and the villainous wizard pitched backward, nothing to stop his fall.
Into the yawning abyss they tumbled; Red Fang, and Aras of Iridess, and Mars Gulgynn, the hero of Fort Friendship. The Red Captain howled, and the clanging of Mars’ armor echoed down, down, down into the unknowable fathoms of the deep.
So it ended.
So it ended, there in the eyes of Hela the Goddess of Mirth and Truth. So met their deaths the heroes of that time. So grief and endless woe did Hannar, Hunnin’s son find. He could not be consoled, or comforted, and he wailed and wept at his mother’s side in that lonely cavern. He rocked back and forth with a horrible sadness, and held her. There was no shield, no quest, no heroic trumpets for victory earned. Only the crushing weight of wrath’s futile fury.
So it ended.
So it began.
24
In time, Elisa, Akram, Hannar, and Kray, now the last of the Elite, made their way to the roads of Duros. There they met friends of the King, and on wooden wheels made their way eventually homeward. They were beaten, bloody, and exhausted. Grief lay on their faces like a shadow. It was a dark day for victory. To Ramthas they bumped and jostled.
Monuments were raised for their return, and preparations made for war. Vows were sworn and bonds made that would endure forever.
Kray and Elisa’s love was cemented by their ordeal. Even as she towered over him, a hero for all to behold, he stood straight and tall. Theirs was a love made in crisis, and would outlast the very stars. They were married before the War of the Wall broke.
Hannar came of age, and was the first of the Anvil Knights. What cruel irony that he would be the last. He grew to be a man of few words and dire strength. Not easily could his victories be counted, but he never knew glory’s celebration. His was a life of darkness and memories fading. Too young had he met death, and the glint of evil in Aras’ spell never fully left the back of his mind. Always the Devourer was there, waiting in dreams, and it made him fierce as a lion.
At Akram’s side were these few always, along with Lawgiver, Angrid the ancient sword, or Huro Din as called by the dwarves.
“We will never forget,” Akram’s great kingly voice rang out to all Ramthas at the memorial this and every year hence, “for our peace is blood-won by sacrifice. Look to your left; there stands your shield. In each other we place our faith, and in every action, we earn this trust. Ours is a strength as old as the Greenway, and immovable as the sun.”
Elisa placed a mighty hand on Hannar’s shoulder. He was gleaming in ceremonial plate in those days. She was immaculate, towering, muscled like a warhorse and beautiful as a goddess.
“She was a great warrior… A true shieldmaiden. No defeat will tarnish her valor, old friend.”
Hannar did not answer. Among rows of Anvil Knights, he prowled and scowled, memories of his mother and father etched in his brows. And it was he who brought up the greatest fighting force that ever walked Alfheim.
Now you know how it began; how the War of the Wall found its roots in a mother’s scream for her child. How those lonely heroes met doom head-on in the depths of the earth. How the power called Red Fang came into this world, and how Mars Gulgynn met his end a hero.
As the war eventually unfolded, the Red Captain somehow arose from his doom in the pits, Red Fang on his belt. No longer mortal was he then, but a demon from hell returned worse than ever. Mars’ victory was sealed though, for the delay of the Red resurrection ensured Ramthas was prepared, the Wall lined with pikes, and those ready to die for righteousness beyond the counting.
Atop the Wall of Duros they fought Red Fang, where once Hannar had defied him single-handed. Legions of elven warriors crashed like waves on a rock in the cataclysmic battles of that war, and the good folk of Alfheim stood firm against the hordes, fending off the eyeless, twisting whips and tentacles of that unholy army.
But that is another story.