Mud and Horn, Sword and Sparrow (Runehammer Books Book 1) Page 7

  In that time, the group had changed. Vald and Sparrow grew closer. Ever their hearts ached for a love they could truly embrace. Into each other’s eyes they would gaze, with despair and longing. He held her, but never kissed her. He wished she was full grown. Their love could blossom, and they would know its warmth before whatever doom was to be met in this netherworld.

  Akram remained alone and unshaken in those long days of uncertainty. His eyes never watered, or shook, or even averted from the shattered horizon. The stout blood of his folk served him well, and he held strength in solitary determination. He had said goodbye to his Queen, and even in this place he knew peace.

  As for Mud and Horn, they had no solace. Horn ever saw that blackened infant face in her nightmares. Her belly ached, her heart felt broken. Lydea’s dead eyes judged her, and invited her to death’s cold. All the ruin of recent years she bore, and could not find a reason to let it go. At the same moment, Mud delved into deeper realms of perception, only peripherally aware of Horn’s despair. Her face was beautiful and dark with hate. In her he saw the long lost beauty of the Elves, and feelings even deeper than kinship briefly haunted him. These he pushed into the black, and trudged forward. He denied himself even the faintest affection, for her eyes were deep and green, and gazed at him from the nothingness of the pools. Those green eyes, frozen and milky at the end of all things. Of this he told no one.

  Time bent. Thirst and hunger folded into confusion and darkness. The suns spun and wandered. A life age passed on that plain of shattered stone, and the blasphemous fumes of a world-not-yet-world were like poison on the windless air.

  16

  Redfang, the butcher of Terror Glen, was hated by all Dwarves. His actions at the battle of Terror Glen were of legend. Not even the woe of a hundred generations could soften his bloody glory. For all that time his sword had lay in this dank barrow, hidden in a labyrinth of corridors and traps devised by the Dwarves of Duros-Tem, who lost scores of their own to its crimson edge. In that place, forsaken by the living, haunted by worms and wretched shadowdwelling creatures, Sparrow found herself lost, and cold, and afraid.

  She sat against a rough-hewn stone wall, wrapped in her torn cloak. The darkness was choking in around her and the silence even more so. She had lost track of time and torches, and still had no idea where the sword lay. On her all depended, and here she sat as useless as a winter swim.

  A score of terrible dooms ran through her mind: torn to pieces by some shadow-lurker, starved to a skeleton or roaming the tunnels as a ghost. She pulled her knees in tight and thought hard. When her courage rose, she walked along the walls, making turns and descending stairs seemingly at random until the gloom and eerie weight of being underground overwhelmed her. She missed Vald. She needed his courage.

  Again she wandered, finding weird five-sided chambers, etched wall frescoes, and root-shattered ceiling domes. Her eyes were watery and wide like a salamander. She sat again, and refused to cry. In that respite she heard it for the first time: a distant, thudding, dragging sound in the deep. Something stirred in the darkness below.

  This realization filled her with a terror that was beyond fear. It was an eldritch, unholy dread. Would she meet her end in the million-toothed maw of some tentacled abomination? Was it the nightmares of her own starved imagination? She stood up suddenly, and ran for a hundred feet at random, slamming into another hewn wall and slumping down. She wanted to cry out in frustration and grief, but it would hear her. It probably already did.

  17

  A sound broke the stillness.

  A distant, impossible thud.

  Another.

  Like boulders calving from a mountain it resounded. Again. Again.

  “It’s time,” Akram stated plainly. The five of them were resting in a triangular hollow, where thinner gathered the green vapor. “our welcome has been extended.” The King’s stone stare met the horizon with Dwarvish resolve. His knuckles white on the hilt of Angrid.

  Sparrow shook her wits clear, ignored her grumbling gut, and spun up on one hand ahead of the King. Her eyes were young and sharp as an eagle. She saw something, but it defied her mind. Vald joined her, but cared not for what came. He surveyed their position tactically. It was a vshaped crag with no exit save where they’d come.

  “Let’s be rid of this canyon, my King. It’s no place to make a stand.” By Akram’s nod, they all rose and made haste. Sparrow was at the ridge’s top in moments, guiding them to a wide open lot nearby. This landscape made no sense, for neither water nor wind carved its mass. It was planar and brutally hard.

  The King made a few gestures, and they spread into positions. Sparrow took her hidey hole, Vald and Akram stood at the spear’s head, and at the rear stood Mud and Horn. What devilry approached they could not know, but there was no ally in this hell. Another thud, closer. The next echoed with falling stone and rubble. Another. It was a lowpitched din of falling castles; the sound of crumbling stars in Ragnarok.

  The next thud grew so close Sparrow almost bounced from her perch. The stone shook. A rolling waft of glowing vapor rushed in on them as if driven by a wall of force, and the thing revealed itself on the plain ahead like a cloud shadow: it was a massive, shapeless terror all black and cloaked in soot. On two legs it strode, as tall as the eldest oak and twice as wide.

  The shape unfolded as it strode, and grew, and expanded. Wide-arcing chains with angular links whirled impossibly around its form, each terminating in a terrible iron hook. The soot and glowing smoke billowed around the thing’s core, but enough was revealed to see a cage of iron struts surrounding a glowing molten heart. Where should have rested a head, there was nothing, and what should have been arms were all swords and razor sharp stones and mind-defying shapes like folded paper sculpture.

  Akram narrowed his eyes and remembered tell of such a thing: part machine, part ghost, part earthworks. His elder kin had called them Archons, or Pillarmen. Like old watchers or guardians they were fabled to know the beginning of time, and the end. As the Falcon King watched this worldeater advance, he realized the legends were true. Little was known of these mythic creatures save their age and power. Akram studied the joints and workmanship, but it revealed little. This creature harkened from a formless epoch, and by its posture and stance, it meant to return the world to that state. Its intent was squarely aimed at the five of them, and it bent downward as it grew near.

  Akram sniffed, and spat, and showed his teeth. If Manac meant to annihilate all the races of Alfheim, he would need more than a single stone warrior in his employ. He had dreaded far, far worse weapons than those at the demon’s disposal. This foe could, at worst, be averted. Manac had foolishly overplayed his first hand of the match.

  “Easy to taunt, easy to draw out, like all wizards,” Akram grumbled, “We must be near.”

  “He wielded a mightier weapon in starvation than this golem,” Vald echoed, “why not wait us out.”

  Mud’s senses piqued. He tensed. Something here was not as it seemed. Manac was no fool nor junior strategist. This was not a weapon, but a deception. But how… What… Very little detail was known of Manac the Red Lord. The heroes possessed no knowledge old enough to use against him, or unmake his servants.

  The most common tale told of a star that was extinguished in the black of the deep sea in time immemorial. There in the crushing depths that fallen light was compressed, and darkened, and made cold with dead hate Manac’s ‘soul’ found form in that blackness, and for eons he slept in a green mucky tomb of lightless death. What awakened him is unknown.

  Another story claimed Manac was a cursed God driven mad with power and cast from heaven. His spite for this he smote on every living thing. When the Gods saw what hell he wrought on the mortal coil, though, they blighted him with a twisted form and trapped him in a remote dimension of chaos. Here in power he grew rather than diminish, and made his return to wreak awful woe on the world. Whatever the true story, his arrival on Alfheim brought with it a decade of plague and betray
al. The old lines of Kings broke; the titans were chained and made myth. Onto this broken landscape Manac spread and prospered, and it was so for three dark centuries. Neither Dwarves nor Men care to tell tales of those times.

  As for Horn, she knew him as the murderer of her husband and unborn child, the architect of the War of the Wall and all its horrors. She knew him as a personal enemy: a ruiner of lives for meaningless, distant dread and plot. Her intent was clouded with rage and revenge, but she had lost care for her life, and visualized no outcome but her blade in his teeth.

  And finally, Vald had been told that Manac was once a mortal Elf, older than the lines of Horun, or Gelm, or even Thonil. That he had sired their great immortal race before turning to a dark path in a broken heart’s wake.

  Either way, he was a treacherous, inhuman killer who took pleasure only in death and doom most high. Vald itched to find out first hand, and show him Fenrir’s mercy once and for all time.

  The Archon was within two bow shots, and its mass was terrible. It gave off a thick choking fume, and smelled of hot metal and brimstone.

  “Hold your feet, friends,” Arkam called in his battle yell, “we will not give this trinket our fear.”

  This command each took within, and made firm their vows and valor.

  The Archon took one more stride and crossed a bow shot. The din of its footfall lifted Sparrow from the ground like a pebble. The noise was terrible, but Akram was motionless, his upper lip curling. Another stride, it was upon them. The chainhooks swirled and floated and whipped like a fox’s tail. It straightened its posture, and the smoke began to clear.

  An otherworldly hum began to grow within that engine of death as the five watched. It vibrated and rattled. Suddenly a series of fissures and cracks in the basalt slab began to glow with white fire. They revealed an alien pattern of interlocking lines and circles like a great fingerprint a bow shot in diameter. Tiny pebbles and dust rose from the fissures weightless, and the glow intensified. The time had come.

  Akram raised mighty Angrid, The Lawgiver. It’s blade shown with green refractions in the light.

  “Make for the knee! The stonecraft is weakest there!” he bellowed, and set his toes behind him. With his weight, armor leaning him forward, he sprung, and drew Angrid back for a stroke that could cleave raw stone like a sapling. Sparrow was even faster, and she darted toward the monster like lightning. She was little more than a blur, then swinging ‘round the black knee like a gymnast. In the rough- hewn workings she jammed one dagger, and sprung away before the Archon could react.

  On this dagger Akram smote his blow with terrible force. The dagger shattered, the knee splintered and shuddered. He landed behind the Archon on both feet, Angrid trailing. The Pillarman seemed unscathed. It continued its whirring, and lifted one malformed arm with menace.

  Vald was already in motion, sliding with his left foot forward and Fenrir, the Grey Wolf, braced on his forearm. With this charge he speared the other knee, and his silver sword pierced it utterly. The leg locked and twitched, but held his sword fast.

  Mud took a step back, holding one arm out to stop Horn’s assault. This was not what it seemed.

  The Archon brought down its mighty limb, and met the slab with thunder. The glowing fissures blinded with glare, and a racket of sliding stone and iron gears echoed through the vapor. An instant later each fissure spread, and turned, and changed. The very ground split and opened and transformed around them, and there was nothing left to stand on. Below them only a dizzying drop awaited into green clouds and sparse floating fragments. There was no escape: they all fell together.

  18

  Dobbs Tarny reached down to his waist and withdrew a dark, bloody hand. What seemed little more than a forgotten barrow was actually a maze of tunnels and traps. He was peppered with cuts and scratches, his knees bloody, and his wineskin empty. It must’ve been well past dawn, but no sun reached this dewy crypt. He searched on, probing the cobbled floor and suspicious walls with his pike like a blind man.

  That little light he enjoyed came from his lantern, which ran dangerously low.

  He considered turning back. The last dart trap, triggered by some rigged floor plate, had pierced him terribly just below the ribs. It was an odd coincidence: the very moment that ugly thought of giving up entered his mind, he heard her. It was Sparrow. Her voice was sharp and high in the murk, and smote his ears with hope and fear all at once. She screamed.

  Dobbs broke into a bullish run, barely staying upright in the dark. Left, right, right again, across a foyer of raw flowstone and into another square chute. A series of sarcophagi in grottos and decorative gloom told him he had reached the nadir of the lair, and as the tunnel opened into a wide, shadowed dome he saw her.

  Sparrow, the nimble girl named Silvi, sworn companion of Vald the Captain of Akram, was dangling from her wrists. Iron manacles gnawed at her and she bled terribly. Her cloak and equipment were strewn all about. At one side of the chamber, a red-bladed sword stood altar-set and eonscrusted. At the other end, a withered, wet skeleton in Elvish armor shambled forward. Its eyes were black as pitch, and from its toothless grin a black ooze dripped. The bony hands were caked in Sparrow’s blood, and it had a look of sick pleasure for its newfound prey.

  What that foul ghoul intended for Sparrow, Dobbs could not tell, but horror took its frigid grasp. He acted on old instinct. The lantern he let fall, set both hands to the haft of his pike, and set his stride against the wall behind him. Sparrow caught sight of him, her hair blood-wet and sticking to her face. She smiled.

  All this the ghastly dead thing assessed in an instant and its horrible undead rage was ignited. It ignored Sparrow and lurched on one broken foot. From the floor of the chamber it drew a jagged cobble, and wielded it overhead like a hatchet. All this Dobbs Tarny could stand, for he was hardened by years of soldiering. But when the thing let fly its hissing cry, his nerve barely held. It was a moaning, screaming, whistling echo of wet bone and rotting tongue. It crackled and broke like a burning witch’s final howl.

  Dobbs was a stout soul though, and driven forward only by selfless care for a girl he barely knew. He shook the dread from his clammy hide and set his knuckles to the spear. The stone-axe of the ghoul was already descending, and Tarny made no defense. He was smote plainly in the neck, just below the ear, and it ripped his flesh open in a red spray. His decision was made, though, and his stroke lashed forward unhindered.

  The pike punched through the skeletal figure with a crack, and fragments of gooey bone and rot flew. The thing faltered. Dobbs flipped his grip and twisted the pike like a pry bar. The rib cage shattered, the pike’s haft splintered. With a clatter the ghoul tumbled to the ground and howled again. Sparrow screamed at the terrible sound.

  “The sword!” she yelled suddenly, breaking the weird speechless void.

  Dobbs turned, held one hand to his spurting neck, and dashed for the weird sacred blade. Before he could reach it, the dismembered thing was toppling onto him with formless malice. It clawed at his back and tore his cuirassbelt to bits. The armor flopped and tangled, and both of them fell a few feet short of the sword-altar.

  Sparrow’s eyes widened. She clenched her teeth and let tear her skin, sliding bloody arms from their holds. The burn was incredible, but this was her only chance. She spun, slipped on a slick of blood, and barely managed to vault to the sword without being grabbed by the undead guardian.

  In slow motion she lifted that age-old weapon from its crypt, and a dim hum filled the room. Down onto the skeletal thing she smote, and it was hewn utterly in two. When struck that relic on stone floor, the crust of ages fell free, and the blade was revealed.

  It was a swirled, rune-etched wonder of bright red steel. An arm span in length and broad as a smith’s hand it was. The blade alone was taller than Sparrow. The hilt was carved in the form of an armored sentinel, and each quillon formed a horse’s head. It shone as if new, and the edge was keen and unchipped. It stuck in the raw stone like a banner standard,
wobbling from side to side.

  The room was quiet.

  Dobbs was frozen in wonder at first, but as his life ebbed from the gash at his neck he flinched, and slumped. To him Sparrow rushed, leaving the Red Blade to wobble. She crouched at his side. The silence of the gloom was terrible, and only his gurgles and choking coughs broke the cloying black.

  “I-” Sparrow tried to speak, she was hoarse with pain and emotion. Tears tracked her red cheeks. “I... don’t know how to thank... how did you...”

  “You-” Dobbs gagged on his voice, and coughed up a thick mouthful of red. It was over. “You never paid for the soup…” He managed a smile, and let slip his life. Many things had he done poorly in life. He was no family man. His business had been petty and wretched. He had been a drunk and liar more than once. Even his daughter, whose grave stood neglected, had resented him. He had made many mistakes, but not today. Today he proved valor highest, and honor true. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose.

  He could never have known, nor will any know, but Dobbs Tarny saved all the races of Alfheim that day. If Sparrow had failed, all hope would be lost.

  She laid him to rest, pike on chest, and said the oldest words she knew.

  The Red Blade, Red Fang, she took from the barrow, and with effort made through the woods.

  Time had run out, if there was such a thing. She couldn’t tell anymore.

  19

  The true definition of simultaneity was a matter normally left to alchemists and philosophers. What Mud once saw as the distant past was now his present, and meanwhile in the distant future, what was once his present unfolded. Sparrow stood here before him, but was also dashing through the woods outside Westburg in the remotest future: her other present. Were there two of her? Would their return to the present occur after their struggle in the past? Or would the distant past of the primordius be their eventual future?