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

  The bars of Duchess Furia’s family tomb rattled that fateful morning, and the Red Captain, a boy of only ten summers, went to look.

  His name was Aras unto that day, but never after.

  To the tombs he walked, slowing as he approached. He had strayed far from the bright ways of the central court, and riding a wooden drake had come to a part of the city he’d never seen. The metal clanging drew him like the smell of supper.

  “Hello?” he squeaked, inching forward toward the high-jambed gate. The sandstone was inlayed with lapis and gold, but he noticed little. In he went and the sun could no longer guard him.

  “Hello?” he said again, and again there came no retort. Down a strange cubic hall crept he, bending his neck at the wondrous frescoes that glittered in the dim. At last his steps silenced, and he turned to a barred doorway.

  There, standing natural as a height of reeds, was a figure. She was dressed in sheer, golden weaves and green drape. At her neck, a broad, golden gorget wrapped from shoulder to shoulder, held by the most delicate gold chain he’d ever seen. Her face was high and slim, and at her square-cut locks hypnotic, beautiful green eyes shone like emeralds. He let out a gasp, and froze.

  “Aras, Lenn’s son,” she spoke. Her voice echoing from beyond space, the tones rang in his mind and chilled his bones, but it was lovely, and gentle, and musical. “Help me, my love. My time to sleep has ended.”

  She did not beg, or plead, or move. Her hands stayed at her hips. She was ageless, but young, and glowing with a warm brown sheen on her flawless skin.

  Aras could not speak. He realized that for the first time he was feeling true love. It was a white hot, almost painful wanting. He wanted to be held by her, to touch her wide lips, to kill the world for her. Like a spellbound tree he reached out slowly, fixed on her infinite eyes, and set free the glyph-enchanted latch.

  She stepped forward. Her bare feet were weightless and perfect. One thumb she placed on his forehead, and again that voice from beyond all worlds vibrated the sandstone like a distant earthquake: “I give you my gift, and go to my red work. Ever will I love you.”

  When the next moment met Aras’ shocked mind, he was sat down on the court steps. Around him the ruin of Iridess burned.

  Bodies were piled at the doorways, or skewered on banner poles, or torn apart and strewn like paintbrushes from street to street. Aras was bloodless, pale as a ghost, and unscathed. To his left he looked, catatonic, and there hanged his mother’s once exquisite form, now rent and tattered, on the dome-spire of a bubbling fountain. She was stuck from hip to collar bone, and the brass spike glowed with a stream of bright red.

  Upon her face he found his eyes horrifically set, unable to look away. She was frozen in her death scream.

  None know, least of all him, how long he sat there in madness’ grasp, or what had happened. But smoking ruins draw the wrong attention. The city was ransacked, and murmured over, and left to the sands.

  The few surviving children of Iridess were traded as slaves, or taken to remote family enclaves. Northmen picked the rubble clean of every brass fitting and iron hinge.

  And nothing was done. There was no revenge. There was no rage or kingdom in flames. The town was simply dismantled, and no one spoke of it. Aras found himself in another Duke’s care, traumatized. His seething inner hell he could not describe, and none sought to comfort a useless child. So, his madness congealed, and became companion to the sorrow he also knew.

  This madness, this despair, drew him back to that crypt years later. A grown man, he delved far further, beyond the deepest chambers of old. There, he found things none know, but when he returned his eyes were infinite green. His bare feet were flawless despite his endless wanderings. His crimson robe was timeless and gleaming with brocades from long-buried kingdoms and ancient secrets.

  There was no longer any thought of his childhood, or the happiness he once knew, only the limitless knowledge of the black between the stars, and the gnawing doubt that he had killed them all. The gnawing doubt that he was the demon. The gnawing doubt that all this was illusion and nightmare.

  Nevertheless, when nothing was done to avenge his home, there was a hunger for death ignited in him that could not be quelled with reason, for he had none.

  “Ever will she love me,” he murmured, facing Hannar, Hunnin’s son on the pinnacle of the Wall of Duros.

  With this, he revealed the obelisk from his cloak, and the power crackled in the air like lightning about to strike.

  19

  A third skein I now weave into this tale, for without it the end will make little sense. It is well known that both Akram the Falcon, and Hannar, Hunnin’s son both met their end fighting back the threat of Manac many years later. Also chronicled are the fates of those countless thousands who lost their lives in the War of the Wall, where elves and dwarves clashed for the birthright of Alfheim. But as the Red Captain sowed the seeds of those tragedies with his campaign of death, little has been spoken of a sword called Angrid.

  The primary mention of this artifact is of course on the belt of King Akram, the Sun Stone, as he strode against the Archons and Manac the Cursed. But those events occurred long after the War of the Wall. In any case, history has described the blade as “old as the races” and “bearing an unhewn lodestone at the pommel.” These details are all too accurate, but reveal nothing of its origin or weighty significance.

  When in pursuit of the Red Captain, and standing beside Elisa the Headsman of Englemoor, Anna, Mars Gulgynn, and the Ramthas Elite; the kind King Akram carried the longhammer of those times. Angrid, the Lawgiver, or Huro Din as it was called by dwarves, was far away. Exactly where it lay is the very linchpin of this tale.

  It stood as so many swords do, blade buried ‘tween the bust of a giant barmaid. This was a stone effigy of Hela, the dwarven goddess of mirth and truth. Patron goddess of Helmar the lake town was she, and guardian over all the lands from Shipshelm to Gem Glacier. This likeness of her was blocky, rough-hewn, old as time, and leaning with tectonic upheaval.

  The gigantic statue sat in geologic silence deep in the bedrock of Duros’ lands, far below the great yawning door of legend, and long-lost to myth and cave-ins. Perfect was the inky blackness at those crushing depths, and the mighty sword, all lapis and geodesic etchings of times before the world knew corruption, rested there for eons. By unknown hands it was placed here, and awaited a hand to raise it once more.

  This was, by all accounts, the deepest cut chasm in all the world. It was hellishly hot, and so far below the surface was this diamond-shaped chamber that the pressure of the rock above gave any who dared its depths an oppressive, dizzy feeling of fear. All save the true dwarves, who had developed an immunity to such things.

  This place was the goal of the Red Captain. His blasphemous visions and war mongering beckoned him here, for his power was forged in the depths, and the deeper he could go, the greater force he could conjure.

  His weapon was not the dwarven sword though, but those whipping, barbed, eyeless eels and slapping rubbery tentacles that seethed and twisted in the sewers below Englemoor, and in the woods near Fort Friendship, and everywhere the Red Captain wrought his deadly work. At the world’s nave, down in the black, was he beckoned, to summon the true strength of that shapeless god-thing’s arm: a tangle of hell to rend the world and pave the way for a dark reign of elvenkind.

  In this planting of war-seed was he sanctioned by the royalty of Kath, and the elves of Aphos, and even the woodlings of the Ebon Dim. For they, too, had rotted and pined in the shadow of men and dwarves too long, and left too many wrongs unavenged.

  It was a sad truth. And in despair the hideous gods find footholds.

  So, they beckoned him there, and he killed all between him and his goal. If he could claim Angrid, the Lawgiver, it would be a collateral boon. If it fell into the abyss it would matter not. No mere steel could stop the slime-wreathed tide of death he meant to conjure.

  Now all that stood between the Red Captai
n, once called Aras of Iridess, was a little boy with a wooden shield. Their clash of wills is one of the greatest battles of that heroic time, and ended with a tragedy that defines this story.

  “Ever will she love me,” the Red Captain muttered in the high wind of the Wall’s upmost rampart. “Ever-“

  “You there!” Hannar’s voice, not yet deep with adulthood, pierced the cold air like a kestrel call. “You and your troop murdered my father, and scores of others! I’m here to see that you answer for it!” Hannar felt like the voice came from somewhere else. His eyes were hot with pounding beats of his warrior’s heart, but he held steady. In his right hand, he held Wall, and in his left the great drifting banner of Duros-Tem.

  “Answer?” Aras replied, beginning to shiver but concealing it. “You are just a pup! Your spirit is noted, little fool, now move aside. We’ve business beyond. Your death is little inconvenience, if you wish it. I remember your father,” Aras continued, trying to shake the boy. “I struck him down in one blow, and his friends ran like frightened mice.”

  The threat was hollow, for biting cold is the ally of dwarves, and these gaunt elven creatures were clearly shaken by the icy gusts. Nevertheless, Hannar was beyond outmatched.

  “Then do your worst, villain,” Hannar replied unmoved, leaning back and rolling his shoulders. “Surely, you and your skeletons can kill a mere boy with ease. I’m only one, and short as a stump. You have, what, fifty warriors at your neck?”

  The Red Captain seethed.

  “Go on, then,” Hannar taunted, opening and closing his shield fist with a smug grin, “This is a good place to die.”

  “So eager for death, are you?” and with one wave of the hand the captain called in his fighters. Their kopesh blades flashed from beneath crimson cloaks, and they swarmed around him like rabid wolves closing for a meal. In their eyes, a supernatural glow boiled.

  Hannar had hoped that his wild, feral berserker would arise in him, but no such thing happened. He faced the red warriors terrified and alone, wide eyed. But the old blood that made dwarven folk mighty was no fickle thing, and did not let him down. He would battle on pure instinct, and they were the instincts of heroes.

  To his left foot he pivoted, crouching back. The banner pole, oak ringed in dull steel and riveted with iron endcaps, he braced at the left toe. The fabric whipped downward, and coiled in the wind between him and his foes. Their vanguard was blinded for a split second, and the twelve-foot pole turned the first three blades akimbo with a clatter. It was already more weight than Hannar could hold, so he let the force spin him like a top.

  The banner pole whirled, arriving back at his fore in an instant. A skilled elven fiend there caught the thing with his free hand, and raised his curved blade like an executioner. Hannar, knowing at least a little of dwarven ways, had already planted the pole in a post-hole at the ramparts’ stone-seam. It braced, and he lunged forward with Wall as his weapon. The wooden disc met the armpit of the attacker with a cracking thud, and broke the elf’s shoulder like a twig. The elf pivoted his weapon to his left hand, though, and finished the attack. The sword ripped through Hannar’s vest effortlessly and his blood sprayed in a steaming mist.

  At that moment, that weird rage returned. His foolish child’s temper unleashed, and across the pave he rolled, springing up and over two foes like a toad. Behind them, he drove Wall into their ankles with a fury. This swept them onto their backs, and he tore one throat from its roots before they could see him wriggling inward.

  Then the battle became a messy thing. They were on him in a heap, tangled up, choking and jabbing, and one pommel came down and smote Hannar on the forehead with a wet thud. Blood clouded his eyes. His strength was nowhere near enough to escape. Thoughtless, he lashed forward with teeth bare, and tore an ear free. This broke the deadlock, and he had smashed a groin, broken a few wrists, and brained an enemy in a single heartbeat.

  Wall he regained somehow, slid out of the pack, and breathed. They rushed him with foolish anger, and he spun aside. Eight or nine of the ghastly fools slid from the rampart screaming into the open air. It was a long way down.

  This drew the ire of the Captain, who was smug no more. He took one step toward the fray, reaching into his cloak with slow menace.

  They had pinned Hannar to the center column, all as one they shoved him. There were three elves on each arm and each leg. A terrible pop was heard, and Hannar was immobilized. He was only one boy against half the original force. The mastermind of the elven wars strode forward, glowing with the power of that hideous obelisk. Aloft, like a lantern he carried that fallen star, a crystal fragment of a god from some unimaginable undercavern that stretches into spiral stairways of madness. It was like a scream, and a chorus of wailing angels, and a seismic pressure.

  A winding, arcing tendril of pure arcane distortion probed out through the dimensions, through that blasted obelisk, and into the battle-mighty mind of Hannar, Hunnin’s son.

  It began to do to Hannar what had felled his father: the rise of the whipping things. A cracking, choked death riven and made mockery. Those rows of clawed suckers rose from within, such as the fate of poor Brann in the woods of Fort Friendship. This was now Hannar’s fate.

  One thing widely known to most of the world, though, is that some dwarves are highly resistant to magic. Hannar held this attribute in the very highest. He was descended of the old elkbeards. He was a child of the boatmen of Helmar and the undefeated raiders of Myron’s Bay. Even Akram knew a branch on Hannar’s family tree, and it was a proud thing.

  Generations of strength, of endurance, of perseverance, and most of all faith; it all gave Hannar a split second longer than his countrymen. The gods were good, for he made great use of that split second.

  His strength returned and the dwarf boy jerked his arms free, broke two jaws, then tumbled from his bonds. One sharp stone shard was in his hand, and he hurled it like a jagged missile. The Red Captain was there in plain sight, in some mesmeric fury. The blow was landed, caroming off the obelisk and into the Captain’s face.

  Aras reeled back, but there were still some twenty elven slashers flying inward toward Hannar. The little dwarf’s dire gaze took on that red, arcing fire from beyond time, for a fragment of the obelisks dark power had touched him, and by the wonders that weave our world from the stuff of stars, it made him strong.

  Hannar lifted a mighty forearm, and a half-dozen warriors were broken to clatter. Two flew bodily from the wall-top. The rest he dispatched like scattered rats. He broke their swords in his bare hands. He hurled them into pillars and vibrated with terrible power. They were all of them destroyed. Hannar surveyed the carnage of the battle, breathing heavily.

  The Red Captain was motionless. He lay on his back, one hand raised. Hannar strode to him in three great leaps. Above the fallen wizard he smoldered, and rose up for the completion of his quest.

  But the Red Captain rose casually, almost bored. He looked in Hannar’s burning eyes, and the warrior boy froze. He relaxed his pounding shoulders, his heaving elbows. Hannar’s gloves fell to the floor with a thump. He let a raspy exhale, and was transfixed by Aras’ voice. His strength and rage had perished in the casting, and the spell was complete. The dark mage had taken total control of Hannar’s mind at that moment, and if he held on long enough, he would control his very soul.

  So it ended. They both stood there, the oddest of couples, now the strangest of companions, and the wind rose again.

  “Go,” the Red Captain barked at last.

  Hannar complied, blank-eyed, and began to work his way down the inner side of the Wall of Duros. It would take most travelers days to descend those heights, but Hannar would find shortcuts that completed the journey in a few hours. Across the foothills to the great Doors they made haste, and vanished into the snows.

  20

  The tunnels went on forever.

  How they survived the tumbling, sliding, fighting, falling descent from the Wrong Way Tavern is unknown. Mars trailed behind the rest
of them, watching every corner, mumbling, smashing the tentacle things when they lurched out from crevasse and sinkhole. O’er his mighty shoulder leaned Ruin, the greatsword he so oddly mastered. It was a wonder to behold, but blocky, almost square-tipped, and with a three-hand hilt that terminated in cubic pommel weights. How he even managed to hold on to it during their fall was a mystery.

  And fall they did, well beyond the kiss of sunlight. They stopped at last in the strange, smooth corridors of the undercaverns. This place they had heard of in whispers and speculation, but none had ever dared its depths. There, eleven of them all told, stood in the purplish dim.

  Akram held the landing first, checking both routes out of the ledge they smashed into. Then came Kray and six of the Ramthas elite. Anna, Mars and Elisa followed.

  “Where are these things coming from?” Akram grumbled, helping Anna adjust her scabbard, “Gods and Devils, look at this place,” His kingly voice was gone, and he was in awe of the works of deep creatures.

  “Wherever this Red Wizard goes,” Anna hissed, pulling her belts away and repairing them herself, “the damned things multiply and kill.”

  “Then we’re on his trail,” Elisa answered, uninvited. She took a step toward Anna and Akram. “I am Elisa,” she went on, removing her headsman’s mask. The tentacle-burns were mostly healed, but it mattered not. The beauty and truth in her wide face put them all at ease.

  Some versions of the story say that the Falcon fluttered at the sight of her. In any case, our greatest King, the Sun Stone, was speechless before her in her full revelation.

  “My King,” she began again, softening her shoulders, lowering her knotted hands. She was feminine as a waving reed and yet thick as an oak. “I tried to fight them back… the entire town… we fought together.”