The Shield of Hannar (Runehammer Novels Book 2) Read online

  The hand fell from its delicate perch at her bosom and wrapped ‘round the great axe like a claw. The knuckles cracked and the leather haft creaked. The sun climbed higher. It was a good day to fight.

  9

  Every dwarf tells the story a little differently. Only one thing is certain in history’s bleary eye: the dwarves fell that day. And, as if their utter defeat wasn’t enough, a doom of ages befell that simple smiling dwarf called Brann.

  As the red-caped captain revealed his other-worldly object with menace, the company of elves beside him lurched forward. They were pale and dirty from the morning’s killing, and ready for more. Most of them sported hideous wounds or spatters of their own blood. Their armor had that curved, fluted look that heightened their woe, each crowned with a bladed cheek-helm and black horsehair tassel. One had but a single arm remaining to carry his kopesh into the battle. How were they even standing?

  Again, the tiny obelisk in the captain’s hand thrummed with evil. Mars sprang from Brann’s left side, his broad two-handed blade rising above and behind him. For a dwarf, he covered tremendous distance in one leap, and placed himself squarely twixt both forces. Hunnin was still well-stowed and unnoticed, Wrimm and Scratch drew their axes and set their toes.

  Brann, however, was frozen. His eyes turned milky white and from sockets bulged like ripe snowberries. His hands were contorted into claws at his sides, and he dropped his shield like a wooden dummy. This Mars did not see, for he was up to his beard in whizzing kopesh blades and dagger swipes. Eight elves fought he all at once, and when Wrimm and the others joined the fray it was a sight to behold.

  Dwarves always fight in a chevron formation. They fall in elbow to elbow, the mightiest at the point, and with each half step forward they lower their heads and attack in terrible unison. It is a sight that must be beheld to truly appreciate its martial efficiency.

  Ahead of the forming chevron, Mars beheaded the two fastest elven attackers. Before they could even slump to the moss, he had spun in a follow through, letting the weight of Ruin carry him around. There he met another warrior square in the chest, and the blade sank beyond seeing into the ringed armor like a cleaver. There Mars let the blade rest, braced on its mighty hilt like a ship’s cleat, and used the leverage to kick his next target upside the ears.

  The whole mess of them fell in a clatter, and the sword came loose in a terrible spray of red. Three more pale attackers leapt over this scene and smashed into Wrimm and Scratch, who led the other dwarves in tight defensive formation. There was redeemed a thousand years of dwarven tactical thinking and training, for the elves broke on them like clouds on a mountain. Axes whirled and dwarven steel met elven teeth with a crunch. The tide of the battle quickly turned.

  Yet another wave of elves met their end, but with them went Wrimm. His death has been told in so many tales, it’s hard to know what truly happened, but this remains clear; he died stick straight and standing, no less than two curved elvish blades scissoring him all but in two. Eyes open and still showing teeth, he went rigid, and let fly a cry so terrible those few dwarves who yet stood shuddered, and were driven mad with battle fury.

  Mars waded through them like grass, cutting elves in whooshing swings and taking iron-booted strides with each deadly arc. Scratch had lost all his allies, those brave dwarves of Fort Friendship, and stood alone atop a great broad root at the battle’s edge. He threw one attacker bodily across the clearing in a shocking feat of strength, lifting the elf by his upper jaw with bloody fingers. But then he, too found death on elvish steel, and fell backward into a hollow. Folk say a thick green heather grows over that place now, and goodly spirit folk gather each moonfall to sing a great dirge for the hero that sleeps there.

  Now Mars and Brann alone remained alive, save unconscious Hunnin is his hidey hole, and fewer than ten elves still fought. There was the briefest moment for Mars to look back, and squint the blood from his eyes. He saw Brann, and the warmth drained from his hands in fear. To say this is no small thing, for this was the greatest warrior of that time and place, and he feared nothing.

  Brann convulsed, and sweated terribly, his eye sockets sunken and grey. Into the sky he stared like a corpse, and his mouth gaped with slack mumbling. Lumps and coiling shapes moved and twisted beneath his skin, and his chainmail swayed with his suffering. The hum of the Red Captain’s artifact grew unbearable, and suddenly Brann’s gaze cleared. He looked squarely at Mars.

  “I am Brann Gulgynn,” he began in a dead, lifeless tone. It wasn’t truly his voice. “I am the son of Goor, and brother to Mars. In Hammer Peak’s cradle was I reared, and at Fort Friendship made honorable. All these things I am, and more…” he trailed off, staring directly into Mars’ eyes, who stood transfixed in terror.

  At that moment, the forest sounds silenced, the humming stopped, the very air froze in place, and Brann Gulgynn was torn apart.

  From his mouth sprang a trio of blood-wet tentacles, lined with barbed suckers and whipping back on themselves as the dwarf’s teeth scattered onto the pine-carpeted ground. His arms split in two like plank wood, and from those awful stumps more of the writhing whips unfurled. To one knee he stumbled, as his left boot split to shreds revealing a fatter, goo-slimed trunk of rubbery muscle. It was a horror beyond sanity, but Mars held his ground, and his grip on that massive blade tightened.

  “Behold,” the Red Captain howled, pocketing the artifact once again and raising his arms like a preacher, “the power of the elves!” At this, Brann, or what was once Brann, let loose an echoing scream. It was deep and hoarse, and bloody, and in his torn throat gurgled with death.

  Mars said nothing. He curled his toes in his boots, breathed in, and in his heart called on Udin to grant him strength. He had none. His knees would not budge. A glance revealed the Red Captain had gone, with what remained of his company, leaving the corpses of their kin to rot.

  Brann continued his awful transformation, growing and splitting and tearing into ribbons of blood. The tentacles multiplied impossibly, erupting and tumbling all around the clearing. They wrapped ‘round tree trunks and upturned noble old stones. In an instant they would be at Mars’ feet. He had to act.

  Now dwarven gods are not known for their attentive nature. Udin least of all, who sits in dark judgment on a throne of storms. They are cold, aloof beings of stone and silver whose gaze remains on the fathomless reaches of time, not the squabblings of mortals. But that red day was different, and once again Mars called upon his gods from his heart. He bade them forgive him, for he was to cut down his own brother in arms. He was not only to see this abomination, but to wade into it, and know the hot hell of a friend’s blood soaking.

  That day the gods answered. Udin himself reached down from between the very stars and touched Mars’ shoulder with one great finger. This thing the dwarf knew in his soul, and with iron tears he set one boot to solid earth, and twisted the hilt of his great sword with creaking knuckles. The first swing was the hardest, and lopped a waist-thick tentacle in twain like paper.

  Black, purplish gore spewed like a geyser. The Brann-thing whirled, and the whips combined their purpose. They lashed terribly, and coiled overhead to strike like cobras. But Mars had the fury of old thunder on his brow, and was unstoppable. He strode forward, dragging barbed suckers with his mighty thighs, and with three flowing cuts he hacked his way to face his brother.

  Up close, what remained of Brann was even more terrible. His jaw was dislocated, one eye had burst entirely from its socket, and half his helm had split open to reveal a pack of tangled squidlings whose hungry suckers twitched and devoured bits of brain.

  He paused not. Mars Guernee Gulgynn let his blade twirl to one hip, reversed his two-handed grip, and in a tremendous feat of strength executed an upward swing no human could ever dream of performing. Six feet of steel sung in the morning dew, and threw a moon-shaped arc of purple mist. From knee to neck was Brann hewn utterly, and the two hellish halves slid apart.

  But it was far from over.


  The dwarf gone, only the horrors remained. They burst from his split rib cage like eels from a dead whale, growing and grabbing and tearing in every direction with senseless malice. These abominations did not please Udin, and his blessing upon Mars continued.

  There, alone, in that clearing of pines near the smoking ruin of Fort Friendship, Mars fought them. He cut them, stomped them, tore them from their roots, and laid low every last writhing one of them. He was covered in filth, wracked by a thousand torn cuts and gaping bites. His armor was split and his nose broken. One hand sported three broken fingers, broken buckles and stray chain rings littered the ground.

  The deed was done.

  As Udin’s hand receded, and the killing was complete, Mars fell to his knees, and he wept. The fury left him, and he was terribly cold. He shivered, bleeding steamy life onto the pine needles. On what shreds of Brann’s kind face remained, his gaze was fixed. He owed him that. This sight he focused on until the black crept into his vision. The birds began to sing again, a breeze grew from the west, and he hung his mighty head like a Kathic statue. His blade fell from limp fingers, and his breathing stopped.

  This was the moment the war of Duros-Tem began. This was the moment the light of the world dimmed.

  Sages and acolytes in every corner of Alfheim felt a tremor. Portents of doom were scrivened and prophecies told. The time of peace was gone. Now, a shadow of death would come to the world: a black winged galleon of war. At its helm the Red Captain stood, and in hood’s shadow he smiled.

  10

  It would begin as so many battles do: a cackling pack of robed madmen would run half naked through town.

  Elisa, the odd, ironic guardian of Englemoor, brooded near the Ell River and considered a plan. She needed a way to draw out every pikeman, every constable, every guard in Englemoor. The lunatics would do nicely. In theory, this civil force she would then steer into the sewers, to battle back the horrors that multiplied there before their numbers grew too great.

  To understand this plot, it is important to take note of the history of that area, for Englemoor was only the most recent occurrence of a settlement that dated back to an antediluvian past, when thick-browed beast men prowled the hills of the Greenway. Of that time very little remains, save a few standing stone dolmens at the edge of town, long since covered in ten feet of loamy grass.

  But on the recent side of the great ice age, Englemoor was a place called Droon Rock. The karst topography of that area made it not only a flat, ideal town site, but its foundation stone was solid and easily hewn. Primitive men could both build and delve here, and so they did for centuries. Droon Rock was a timbered hall, farming village, and more notably, a labyrinth of burrows and tunnels that stretched all the way to the Rivers Ell, to the south and Furos in the west.

  Not without a taint of shadow was this ancient place. In those tunnels blasphemous rites were chanted to long-forgotten gods. Great curving troughs were gouged to channel human blood from sacrificial pits, and piles of human bones had been found in the older caverns. What horrors those cave-dwellers and cloud-worshippers performed is mercifully lost to time, but the resonance of their shadowy purpose could not be washed away.

  After the Age of Nurin, when the first true kings of mankind receded into memory, there was a long quiet on the central lands of Alfheim. Then was forgot Droon Rock entirely, and thick grass concealed old crimes red and whispered. In time, oblivious newcomers and their kin settled the area, lured by its bounty of usable quarries and river shores.

  This folk were fur trading woodlings and fishermen. Ardenmoor they named their town, after their head family, and they clear cut the surrounding forests to build the roads and village sites that remain to this day. They were goodly, industrious folk, and brought the sun of reason to their time.

  But the stain of eldritch wrong simmered beneath their foundations, and the town of Ardenmoor eventually fell on dark days. Plague and feud both wracked their happy respite. Murder became known to its people, and families cowered in their homes as reavers and avengers crisscrossed the moors like ghosts. Onto this decaying scene strode the Ardenwatch. These priestly knights bore new steel from the far south, and spoke with the silver tongues of saviors. In truth, however, they tortured their way into power, and hanged every dissenter in the name of order and law.

  At its height, the Ardenwatch was a humming machine of punishment and ignominious death. Into cubic chambers below the town they packed their “suspects.” Into these stone cubes would fifty or more innocent souls be stuffed and left to die. What a slow, horrible doom befell that poor folk in the lightless hell of the Arden cell-blocks. They starved, and resorted to cannibalism and far worse, only to die forgotten in heaps.

  Like all tyranny, this one reached its zenith, and could not be endured. The Ardenwatch ended utterly in one horrible night of fire and frenzy. Townsfolk and their wild kin revolted with fury and cruelty on those false knights, and re-took their home with pike and torch.

  Then, the long quiet of more modern times began. The name Arden was struck from every post and stone, and changed to Engle. Those that survived the horrors of the Ardenwatch were kinder, simpler folk, and held a firm grasp on reason with their humility. The town grew again, and in two centuries’ time the night of Arden terrors faded into a story told by candlelight.

  The tunnels lay abandoned. No soul dared those crypts and mass graves save the town watch, who used its uppermost catacombs to house the violent, the evil, and most of all the mad.

  Who knows how such things gain momentum, but many settlements around the Greenway heard of the asylum in Englemoor, where the insane could be held humanely, and ofttimes reformed to normalcy. To that town they wagoned their madmen, and with no dark purpose. The holding cells of Englemoor were sunlit in many cases, well cared for, and truly just. The insane were cared for in earnest, and with a gentle hand. It was a time of good and mercy, and pride was held for that place, though to many the mad can be unnerving.

  So, the present day unfolded there. Arranged marriages made mighty the kin of neighboring lands, and Englemoor grew. It gained the problems of a larger city and shed its pastoral roots. The catacombs became a detail of little interest in the bustle of court life.

  Always, though, the sensitive of that place could feel the shadow below the earth. Those musty halls were delved too far, and still harbored the echoing screams of a thousand ghosts. Deeds so terrible find a way of resurfacing in new forms, and denial is no tincture for the inevitable.

  These housed lunatics would Elisa use to unify the town against the greatest threat it yet faced: that roiling, seething mass of tentacle things in the tunnels. If her last glance had told true, there were tens of thousands of them, each as strong as dwarven swordfighter and no easier to kill.

  Elisa took a moment, washing in the morning steam, to consider her odd fate. What was this town or its people to her? Why had she chosen this fugitive vigilantism? Why not simply disappear into the Northlands and remain a hillwoman in peace?

  The answer for her took not the same words as history tells, but held the same meaning. Hill folk of Alfheim, the children of great and mighty blood, harbor valor highest and ageless heroic instinct in their great hearts. They are the best of us, and never turn a cruel cheek to the trouble of others. They abide no shackle or injustice, like wild lions they are uncontainable, but righteous. Their kin are humble and blend into the woods like elk, but when doom threatens the weak they rise like a black anvil cloud.

  So, the same responsibility rose in Elisa’s heart. She would fight back this eldritch tide, take no credit, and be rid of Englemoor. Her conscience would be clear and she would return to the hills with bright eyes. Or perhaps she would wander east, toward Duros-Tem and the great stone doorways of the Dwarf Homes. Freedom was hers, and youth.

  All she needed now was a few hundred swords to help in the fight. It would be a bloody day.

  Elisa found her way to the Asylum tunnels, cramming her towering muscled for
m through a drain, ‘round countless corners, and ‘tween rusted out barricade bars. She was terribly strong, and the right purpose of the day made her more so. In those bright green eyes her blonde locks flitted with sweat and the morning damp, but she was set to a fight and a fight she’d find.

  On her head, she donned the grim headsman’s hood. She wasn’t even sure why. Was it to conceal her acid burns, deny her accusers their wrath, or simply as a sort of battle ritual? No matter. She donned it, and was a sight fit for the tunnels of Englemoor.

  A few simple iron doors unhinged, a hatchway left open, and one addled guard knocked senseless and stowed in a broom closet was all it took. She crouched in a damp shadow and waited. In her mind’s eye, she could see the enemy clear as day: writhing, multiplying things in the gloom. She would work to see that no lives were lost, but better ten guards now than a thousand innocents in a week’s time.

  The patients of Englemoor Asylum began to rub their eyes and creep out of their cells in disbelief. One, then three more, then a throng of them. The less restrained among them let loose a victorious cry, and all hell broke loose. They found the hatch, scampered to and fro like crazed rats, and hurled themselves into the sunlight, cackling with glee and comical exultation. Guards scurried, the warden cursed and raised a great bell tolling to the royal guard. Elisa’s army was assembling.

  The patients made a perfect mess of things. They were joyous, terrified, or simply arms outstretched, eyes closed, drinking in freedom like iced Gar. One robed inmate spotted The Headsman plainly, gave her a friendly nod, and went on his way, walking with an invisible cane to aid his regal stature.

  The time had come. Plenty of guards, thugs, and sentries were in the streets above the Asylum. She caught the hatchway with a single hand, vaulted up like an ape, and stood wide-legged in the avenue just beyond the square. Her white linen raiments barely obscured her modesty, but beyond this, her impeccable musculature struck townsfolk, lunatic and guard alike, with awe and fear. The sunlight loved her form, and the very gods bowed their heads for her beauty.