Mud and Horn, Sword and Sparrow (Runehammer Books Book 1) Read online

  Mud was only an Orc. He was a hero, a warrior, a freedom fighter, and a father; but still only an Orc. Still, his eyes saw beyond the stars, and his mind had breached the dream of the Black Pools. So it was he had the best chance of comprehending what it truly meant for things to occur simultaneously. Anyone else would be driven mad to even consider it all, but Mud had already gone mad.

  This he pondered in the instant before Manac revealed himself.

  The five of them had tumbled through green clouds and shattered stone. They bounced and bobbled like limp dolls. Beneath them, the Archon plummeted. In a terrible avalanche they all made land on a circular slab of basalt. It floated in the green void impossibly, and again the giant fingerprint of concentric etchings made the surface glow with eldritch lines.

  Here they fought the Pillarman. Sparrow leapt and flitted like a dart, Akram drew the creature’s rage and smashed at its knuckles with Angrid’s dire edge. At the monster’s flanks were the other three: Vald, Horn, and Mud all grappling and lashing. What they crushed reformed, and when it faltered its molten core glowed and renewed. It seemed invincible.

  With a tremendous swoosh one chain-sword-arm swung over Horn’s head, bowling Mud over wholly. With energy wound in crouching she sprung straight upward, and such a leap was never seen before. 3 men high she popped like a frog, and spun at the apex. One curved dagger ripped across the Archon’s chest, grazing the glowing core. The dagger took on the glow and burned her hand, but the Archon was scathed. It reeled back, and turned, and lost its weight. Vald levered one of its mechanical ankles with his shoulder, and it toppled.

  This would have been no threat to such a creature, but Akram, the wily King of Alfheim, held fast in crouch with sword braced. The pommel he pressed to stone’s surface, and bowed his head. The Archon fell directly onto the blade, and its own weight let pierce the blow. Into this Akram straightened his back, and flexed his ropey thews with cracking and grunting. Through the Pillarman he drove Angrid, and for a moment lifted it utterly.

  The glow faded, the chains ceased to whirl, and the black choke cleared.

  “It’s done.” Vald breathed.

  “Is this all you can conjure, coward?” Akram bellowed, “show yourself!” Nothing.

  Horn rubbed her burnt hand. Her dagger had cooled, but retained a weird orange glow.

  Mud mended her burns, looking deep into her elven face, “One of many,” he muttered.

  “What’s that, Mud?” Akram asked, finally resting on one knee and examining the incomprehensible corpse.

  “One of many, King Akram,” Mud answered. “The Archons were a race of countless thousands.”

  As if on cue, the green clouds cleared as he spoke, and Sparrow’s eyes went wide with horror. Across the drifting slabs and fragments in this hellscape, a vast swarm of the Archons came into view. They clung and scratched at every stone chunk like ants. Something had alerted or awoke them, and they were drawn to the five heroes with murderous, faceless clanging.

  “Gods,” Akram whispered. His back stiffened. For a Dwarf, especially their king, fear and shock were not one in the same. “If we can kill one, we can kill a thousand. Let them come!”

  Mud laughed and shook his head. The others almost flinched at his laugh, for it was not a comforting sound, but the laugh of a berzerker. He placed one giant hand on Akram’s shoulder.

  “I dare touch the King of Alfheim,” he spoke in a dire, almost demented tone, “I dare lay my hand, scarred by slavery, on the Falcon, Lord of the Wall. I do this because today I am no longer your servant, or subject, or prisoner or rebel. Today I am your friend.” Mud turned, eyes wide with fury. He faced the countless monsters; back to his company. His hands he lifted in a grand gesture, and he vibrated in his boots like a harp string.

  “What is he” Vald began, but was cut off.

  “Down!” Horn shouted.

  At that instant, Mud leaned back and uttered some eldritch word, and brought his hands together in a clap. From this exploded a wall of invisible force that drove every speck of dust before it. Horn slid backward a stride, Vald spun and sheltered Sparrow, who was lifted bodily from the ground. The Dwarf King, though, stood unmoving. His beard whipped and twisted, but his eyes were solid stone, save for the wrinkles of a warrior’s grin.

  The shockwave shattered stone and Archon alike in a sphere of expanding debris. The otherworldly landscape spun and became clouded with black smoke. It was a pyroclastic cloud of fragments and plumes of flame boiling and shaking with a deafening roar. Mud fell to one knee, smoldering. The Pillarmen lost a wave of their number, but thousands remained.

  Horn rushed up to Mud and helped him, but he was hot to the touch. He finally looked up at her, finding comfort in her face. She gasped. One of his great Orcish eyes had burned out entirely, leaving a smoking socket. His lips were peeled and burnt, and veins bulged at his neck and forehead.

  “What was that?” She whispered.

  “All the fury of the Orcs,” he replied in a broken voice. “And not enough, to sway even the most forward of their number.”

  “It certainly makes a statement!” Akram bellowed. “HA! Watch as they clamber over the ruin of their comrades!” He laughed out loud and helped Mud to his feet. “Manac, you devil! Shall we continue with these games or have you the stone to show your face! Kill us yourself, you miserable welp!”

  This taunt echoed on the shattered stones as the rumble dissipated.

  “Aye,” Vald spoke up, “If you can hear us, wizard, prove you can do better! Show yourself and be done with it!”

  Sparrow then appeared at their side. She kissed Mud’s cheek, pulling him down to her, and yelled in her own tiny voice: “Surely the courage of a girl isn’t too much for you to handle. But if it is, I suppose that’s ok. We’ll find you eventually, even if you insist on hiding.”

  Now, the details of combat make petty tales. Swords flashing and toes in stone planted; these are trite and pulpish details more fit for drivel than literature. So let me tell of you of Manac, and the battle of the primordius, in terms the ages will know. Which swords cut what bone can be left to detectives and roustabout academics. We will focus on what truly happened.

  Manac the Demon, Genocider, World-Killer, appeared when called. Mocks made were answered in terror’s stare. The girl called Sparrow flitted on mist a-hiding, and Vald the Captain was as unwavering as the Dwarven Wall. Past them marched Akram, the Falcon King, Lord of the Dwarves. He strode ahead of his much taller man at arms and met Manac with a grim stare. Even his spit he kept, for this genie deserved less.

  Words were exchanged, and lost in the twirling vacuum of that primeval place. When shadow met stone Horn had made her silent way to Manac’s back and there lunged. Knife met hood and neck. He was a tree trunk of black thews, leather jerkin and studded gorget. His skin was like a black shark, all meshed into teeth and claw. He… IT was clad in black hides and crude-pounded rivets. Eyes like red coals burned in skull-holes too high for a human. It was a true demon: otherworldly and equipped with wanton malice to douse the stars.

  Horn’s blade pierced all this, and sprouted from his throat like a cat-call. Black oil sprayed forth and it laughed a blasphemous wet laugh. This cue took every hero, and the battle was joined.

  The ages will forget how, but Manac was put to his heels by the heroes’ company. Across a great gulf he leapt, sprouting wings of grey vapor and laughing like a devil. At this moment his master spell was revealed: a magical bomb to end the races of the world and lay darkness at Manac’s cloven feet for all time.

  “Behold, insects! The doom of your time!” his voice was a hollow, backward thing, “this poison will echo forward into time, and lay dead every race of Alfheim!”

  “And what then, fiend?” Akram demanded, bracing his boots for a thrust.

  “Then, dog of Duros, my kind will rise! The children of the meteor will claim this world, and the next!”

  Flames leapt and licked, and Vald knew time had run out. Beyond the tyrant, i
n gloom and smoke, the spell was forming. It was a twisting green mass of oily energy, coiling into a dragon’s eyes, a screaming skull, a ringed celestial sphere, a storm of spikes and phantasmal death. They had to end it, and Manac would not let that happen as long as he drew breath; if he breathed at all.

  Akram was grim and his eyes smoldered with red work. At the head of the 5 of them lunged he, and Sparrow was all but invisible in Vald’s mighty shadow. The Orc King called Mud squinted with his remaining eye and with one hand worked a new gease: he attempted to read the mind of the demon madman. In that dark consciousness knives and gore and terror all swirled. It was a plane of pure evil, and it dreamt of desolate, dead glory.

  Mud strained, and probed further into the demonic mind. If he was careless, Manac would be alerted and destroy him instantly. So he looked, and there found only one fear: Redfang. This name connected not only to a sword of terrible power, but an Elf warrior… The two were one somehow, and entombed in Mud’s own time, millennia into what was now the distant future.

  It was their only hope, for alongside that key truth Mud could see immense power. Power far beyond any ability they wielded. They had to have the weapon to stop Manac, or all would be lost.

  Akram took another strained step forward.

  “Hold your tongue, demon! End this madness!” Akram’s voice was a lion’s roar.

  Manac turned slowly, his hands still contorting and casting. His face was a nightmare to behold, Horn’s dagger still defying his throat like a rhino’s horn. He spoke to the King of the known world, and that voice was an eldritch, undead thing bubbling and tremoring with doom’s music.

  “Break yourselves on my body, welps,” he thundered, and the spell continued. The green ball of energy was growing and twitching.

  “Such confidence from a coward who hides in time’s womb and slaughters his own people,” Akram returned. He was standing firm. The smooth black marble floor vibrated.

  “Let me, my King!” Vald suddenly called out from three strides behind. Sparrow flinched at the command and power in his tone. She seldom heard him use such a cry, and it was terrible with fury.

  “Stay old Fenrir, my captain,” Akram replied, “Angrid will drink his blood, and I will bear the joyless kill. This sorcerer ends now!”

  Angrid, and Akram himself, had not the power to confront the wizard. They would shatter on him like waves on stone. So would they all if Redfang could not be brought down. In an instant the Orc King hatched a plan, and as the battle was unfolding before him, he enacted it. He turned, slid toward Sparrow despite Vald’s great mass, and revealed Kazgat’s amulet.

  “Back to Westburg, Sparrow,” he yelled over the rising din, “to our time, to recover Redfang. It will be entombed in the hills. Follow the rune on the old tower, and return to this instant with the blade. On this, all depends. GO!” He slammed the amulet into her tiny hand, and before she could blink, or argue, or understand, she was gone.

  “What have you done?” Vald bellowed, “that was our only escape!”

  “And our only hope, Silver Storm. If Sparrow fails, we all die anyway” Mud could not finish his explanation, for Akram strode forth, and the battle was joined again.

  Dwarves are known as clumsy, but indomitable warriors. They open their battles with howls and song, and deliver terrible crushing blows in the first volley. Akram was no simple Dwarf, though, for not only was he half human, but raised in the mountains of Ur, where the weapon of choice is the dagger and bow, and guile is treated with equal regard as might. So he moved with lithe readiness, knowing the fight would not end in one fell chop, but a dance of death that could last hours.

  He darted and leaned, and drew shield and sword like a castle defender. He was swift and spun, and pivoted his boots to find leverage against the sorcerer’s wild convulsions.

  20

  Once she had returned to Dobbs’ old tavern, Red Fang wrapped in cloak, Sparrow took a moment. A moment to remember Dobbs, a moment to shake the face of that dead thing from her mind, a moment to collapse.

  When she woke, she realized she had no idea how to return to the primordius and make good on Mud’s plan. She stared at Kazgat’s amulet balefully. The etchings shone and shimmered in that moldy dim, and offered no secrets. She squeezed it, rubbed it, yelled at it, held it aloft. Nothing.

  Had she failed them? Her sense of time dilated and warped: was time passing in parallel in the past? Or did she have years to decipher the amulet’s function and return? If Manac had defeated them, wouldn’t the world already lay desolate? If the world was intact, then surely she had already succeeded, in a distant past that was her immediate future… The ceiling wheeled. She went to the kitchen, still stocked, and made herself a plate of soup and cheese.

  With this pilgrim’s meal she took a mug of ale from the barrels. She had never enjoyed it, but that first sip set her heels to the ground and her elbows to the table. She let a long sigh fill the lonely silence and ate.

  “Never ponder time on an empty stomach,” she toasted herself. So it went on for weeks. She puzzled over the amulet, cleaned and cared for Red Fang, and made herself a meal. On the first Lord’s Day, a set of travelers entered the tavern, weary and in need of board. These she fed, and shared stories with, and gave them room. She charged them nothing, but they left a few coins in the egg basket when they left.

  These coins she used to refill the larder, and in time she learned of all the comings and goings of the ruin that was once Westburg. The old tower was always near, where lifetimes ago she faced the Spider Queen and set in motion her mind-wracking charge: to retrieve Red Fang, and return to the primordius to strike the final death blow on the demon sorcerer Manac.

  Spring began to glow into summer, and at last Sparrow had found a clue in the whispering of roadmen: 3 amulets were there in the barrows of Westburg. These were made by three wizards. Each held terrible power, and could only be activated by one keen in shadowy arts and conjuration. Legend told of a man becoming a mountain, of flying beasts and gleaming dragons. All these were credited to the Amulets of Amar.

  On this clue, Sparrow stole away to the old tower one night. Returning to that elven gloom made her blood like ice, and her fingers were white with fear. The flash of terror from that night, when Horn’s dagger found its poisonous mark, seared her eyes in the deep black. That spidery abomination, writhing and screaming in the moon’s blue sea was a nightmare lived and wished forgotten. Every corner and stairway held loathing, and disgust, and chill dead echoes of blasphemous deeds.

  Neverthe less, she found the library. By torch’s feeble gleam it loomed up over her; wide shelves leaning and cobwebbed in a sick green glow of wall drapes. These drapes were stitched with spiral hellscapes of insects and screaming souls. The elves had truly descended to nightmare, building their magic empire on the bloody backs of countless Orcish slaves.

  This thought renewed Sparrow’s purpose, and she began her search. She had until dawn, Red Fang at her side. It was believed that to tread in these webbed walls would bring doom on the town, so she had to slip away unseen and return again if her search failed.

  “The Amulets of Amar. ..” she whispered, scanning the spines of weird-hued leather tomes. But she immediately bit her tongue, and flinched, for to hear a human voice in that cyclopean ruin was a jarring thing, and she made mental note never to make a sound in this place again.

  The books stretched up into infinity, the meager glow of flame was pale and muted against the gloom, and hours slid away. These were treatises on torture, and daemonology, and history, and what passed for medicine. They were scrawled with mad markings, filled with faded illuminations, or overfilled with frantic script that bent into the margins. Sparrow noticed dawn’s first blue glow outside, and she had barely explored one small shelf.

  She set her teeth, and prayed that in the primordius, time had stood still.

  So she lived for a span not of weeks or months, but years. She tended Dobbs’ old tavern, and skulked off to the library each
night. Travelers, pilgrims, and sell swords passed through the remnants of old Westburg, and Sparrow learned much of the wide world.

  As this time passed, she grew into adulthood, and as a young woman she missed Vald terribly. The library was mostly explored, every lead pursued, but still she had only memories of him to cherish. Memories of him lost in a distant past that would be her future.

  At last it came to a dark, windy night. Exhausted and broken, she pulled another moldy tome from the high shelves, and sighed as she opened the pages. The book seemed promising: a treatise on magical jewelry. After hours of frustrated searching, she gazed at the amulet in frustrated resignation. This she had done a thousand times.

  “I wish this had never happened at all,” she whispered in a barely audible breath, “I wish I had grown to love my Captain, and the Falcon King would bless us both.” She let tears roll. She remembered the dead thing in the barrow, the corroded blade, the eyes of Dobbs Tarney as he bled empty on the sickly wet stone. She remembered the Archons, and Mud’s smoldering eye socket. She saw Horn and her fury.

  “Enough,” she breathed, “enough waiting, enough studying.” She set the amulet on the desk, clearing away the piles of papers. “If it is Red Fang you crave, then Red Fang you will have!” Her raised voice stirred the countless ghosts of the place, but she didn’t care. From cloak and scabbard she drew the hellish sword. It shone and rippled in the dim, and she lifted it like a god-hammer over her head. With a mighty strain she brought the blade down. The amulet remained untouched. It almost seemed to repel her strike. Every effort, every hour, every week she had spent: nothing. She was a grown woman now, and worn with toil and sorrow for a failure she could not bear. Here, this wretched trinket laughed at her, refused her, and threatened to drink her happiness dry. She would die never seeing Vald again.

  “No!” This time she screamed, and leapt into the air like a dervish. One knee up and the other foot trailing, she hung suspended for a micro second, then brought a hellish chop down toward the relic. “NO!” The blade found its mark, there was an odd clanging and echo, and in a fraction of an instant, she disappeared.