Karnov

by Matthew Knight

  “What does that mean?” I queried guardedly.

  D’vartha smiled. “Suffice it to say that you shall yet witness the heavy toll which is exacted when the Earthly Demonic is manipulated by such a corrupt and sinister hand as Nesadomntha’s.”

  “More riddles!” I hissed. “You’ve a serpent’s tongue behind those ruby lips, I swear it!”

  Asenthine scowled suddenly with vexation. “If only my steed Merklethenon were here. It would make this damnable trek less of an ordeal.”

  “That truculent beast is most likely devouring livestock at a distant farm somewhere,” I said mordantly. “But perhaps you could transform a passing goat into your next mount?”

  The Alunai nobleman remained dour of countenance as he fixed me with a withering glare. “Your wit is truly peerless, human.”

  “Enough prattle!” I said, glancing skywards. The midday sun was all but obscured by a cinereous vault of brooding cloud. “It will be dusk by the time we reach the demon’s barrow. But I vow that blasted necromancer’s demented plot to unleash the hordes of the Niaughu upon mankind shall be thwarted!”

  “Know this, Karnov,” growled Asenthine, his pallid brow furrowing. “Nesadomntha is mine. I will wreak my vengeance upon that revenant for the role he played in the decimation of my people, and the blow which ends his foul life shall be dealt by me alone.”

  A mirthless grin crept across my face as I studied the vampyric warrior. “Of course, Asenthine. Far be it from me to stand in the way of a man and his revenge.”

  Chapter III: And the Earth Shall Disgorge Its Wrathful Legions! (The Battle of the Marsh: Part I)

  Our journey into the dank embrace of Karagh-Ghul’s miry interior was vile, yet uneventful. D’vartha’s enchantment ensured that we were hidden from the eyes of Nesadomntha’s thralls and also served to keep at bay the more ferine and ravenous denizens of the feculent swamp. Wrathmane’s tireless advance through the marsh was slow but unerring, and Asenthine’s vampyric constitution served him well as he leapt nimbly from the gnarled and blackened boughs of the innumerable vine-shackled trees which thronged the humid morass. The incessant chittering and keening of the slough’s malign fauna rose in intensity with each onerous yard we traversed until it was akin to a maddening and ceaseless cacophony in our ears. At length, as the moon languorously supplanted the sun in the darkling sky, we at last found ourselves overlooking the vast swale wherein the barrow of Esmadrunga sat brooding like the rotting carcass of some moss-encrusted titan of primeval myth. A score of Niaughu swarmed dementedly over the surface of the mound like colossal ants, while several of the batrachian creatures which served as Nesadomntha’s minions squatted silently within the foetid bog, their bulbous eyes wide and unblinking. D’vartha and I swiftly dismounted and crept closer to survey the hive. Silent as a ghost, Asenthine then leaped from the twisted bough of a towering tree and moved stealthily to my side. His crimson cloak was befouled by the muck of the mire and his eyes seemed to glow with a simmering rage.

  “We must draw Nesadomntha out from that foul subterrane,” hissed the Alunai swordsman.

  I nodded grimly. “The clamour of battle shall serve in that regard, I’ll wager.”

  D’vartha hefted her ensorcelled staff and studied the black barrow. “While you engage those creatures, I shall seek a path into the mound and strive to liberate Esmadrunga from the necromancer’s spell.”

  “And what if you require our aid within that verminous vault of ghouls?” I asked. “How will we know how you fare in those benighted depths?”

  D’vartha sighed exasperatedly and reached out to lift the lucent visor of my helm. Then she placed her fingers lightly upon my forehead and closed her eyes. At once, I felt a strange sensation of tingling cold envelop my brow.

  “There,” the witch said, swiftly withdrawing her hand. “For a time, there shall be a sorcerous link between us. You have but to picture me in your mind’s eye, and for a fleeting moment you shall possess the ability to see through my eyes. Although I very much doubt that I shall require your assistance, Karnov.”

  “So be it, woman,” I assented grudgingly.

  The crimson-tressed sorceress then proceeded to remove the severed head of Xycanthia from its box and tie the grisly object unceremoniously to her belt by the strands of its own slimy, matted hair. Bloated maggots dropped from the greying flesh and the pale eyes set within the decaying skull seemed to gaze out unnervingly as if in mute malice.

  I scowled in disgust. “Again I ask, why must you cart that hideous thing about? What exactly are you going to do with it?”

  D’vartha smiled coldly. “If you must know, I’m going to feed it to Esmadrunga. Consider it something of a sanctified burial, if you will. And after my sister’s debasement of the Earthly Demonic energies, such an act will also have an element of poetic justice about it, don’t you think?”

  “Whatever you say,” I grumbled.

  “My spell of concealment shall be lifted in mere moments,” the witch rasped. “But I shall perform another rite forthwith… an invocation which will even the odds in this battle significantly!”

  And with that, D’vartha disappeared into the writhing shadows of the mire.

  “She’s touched by moon-madness, I’ll warrant,” grumbled Asenthine disdainfully.

  “Mayhap,” I replied. “But I’m thankful she’s here with us, regardless.”

  Asenthine shook his head and proceeded to creep closer to the edge of the marsh. With his black cuirass glinting in the moonlight, he seemed to traverse the foliage with the preternatural stealth of a wraith.

  Doffing my cloak, I turned to my silent steed Wrathmane and patted his glistening flank. “Stay back, my friend. Engage such fiends as seek to waylay you, but do not venture any closer to the mound. Your great size will not serve you well in that treacherous mire.”

  I made to unfasten my war-scored shield from the barding’s steel-plated crupper, but swiftly thought better of it; the impending battle would require the two-handed arc of my broadsword and I therefore decided to sacrifice defence in favour of a harrowing and pitiless whirlwind of steel.

  Suddenly, the voice of D’vartha crested the clamour of the teeming swamp. Her words of invocation were uttered in a tongue beyond my ken, but I knew instantly that the spell she intoned was born of the ancient chthonic grimoires of the Earthly Demonic. Turning swiftly to gaze at the barrow, I descried the Niaughu fiends abruptly cease their movement and lift their squamous faces to the sky, evidently enthralled by the sound of the sibilant rite. Scant seconds later, the marsh before the great mound began to undulate and churn, as if it were an ocean disturbed by a tempestuous gale. The surface of the mire then commenced to bubble and roil, emitting thick plumes of viridian vapour. My eyes widened in astonishment as I duly beheld the first of D’vartha’s conjured vassals rise languorously from the foetid bog. A creature cast crudely in the semblance of a man, its body was evidently composed of the very mire itself. The paludal golem sported a skin of viscous moss and lichen, its sinews seemingly crafted of knurled roots and twisted vines. Its muculent muscles rippled fluidly and a plethora of worms and insects writhed within the verdurous latticework of its hulking frame. Sporting a tuberous face devoid of features and twin black hollows wherein no eyes dwelt, the muck-encrusted mockery of a man finally hauled its steaming bulk triumphantly from the marsh. And all around the fibrous effigy, more of its misshapen ilk were rising from the quagmire and slowly assuming formation before the brooding barrow of Esmadrunga. I could scarcely fathom the magnitude of the sorcerous power which animated those grotesquely shambling creatures, but when I glanced to the eastern edge of the swale, I acknowledged in a heartbeat the undeniable might of the woman who had marshalled them. D’vartha emerged from the shadows like a demigoddess of myth, her magicks bearing her aloft so that she glided effortlessly above the surface of the marsh. Her crimson hair was whipped by an eldritch wind, imbuing it with the disquieting aspect of a fiery halo, and her eyes blazed with an arca
ne radiance. I watched transfixed as the enchantress smiled mirthlessly and raised her staff, whereupon it disgorged a shrieking tendril of viridescent sorcery which smote a trio of enraptured Niaughu instantly to charred and riven ruin. I rose from the dank verdure and dragged my sword free of its scabbard as one of Nesadomntha’s batrachian aberrations turned its malefic eyes upon me.

  “The veil is lifted!” I bellowed to the shadowed form of Asenthine. “Now, deal red slaughter unto the thralls of the mound!”

  The battle was joined and carnage reigned untrammelled. My sword clove into the leering mien of a shrieking Niaughu and split its vile, tentacled skull asunder. Greenish blood spattered my cuirass and I felt the opiate surge of power as the soul of the wretched creature surrendered to my enchantment’s ravening hunger. In a searing blaze of icy light, the mystic armour of the Cosmic Ice abruptly manifested about me, shimmering and writhing upon my body like an undulating, spectral shell. Three more of the abominations fell before my steel like wheat before the scythe, and with each stroke I sensed my ensorcelled armour growing ever more engorged with eldritch might, the azure mana rapidly encasing my earthly form like a lucent chrysalis. All about me, the hulking sentinels of D’vartha solemnly engaged the keening fiends of the mound, and with a sense of grim satisfaction I realized that the miry warriors were indeed well matched against the foul vassals of Nesadomntha. I swept the misshapen head of a Niaughu from its sinewy body and spun to drive my befouled blade into the chest of another demon at my back. Thrice more my cerulean sword performed its butcher’s work and a twisted pile of ravaged flesh and mangled limbs began to form at my feet.

  I glanced to my left to see Asenthine performing a silent and elegant dance of slaughter amidst the throng of Niaughu, his slender blade weaving a scintillant web of pitiless death in the half-light. At the perimeter of the marsh, the adamantine hooves of Wrathmane struck like ice-bound hammers, dashing the skulls of any Niaughu who deigned to assail him into a foul slurry of green gore. A group of four crimson-eyed fiends then leapt toward me from the shadows of the swamp and pressed their ferine assault. One of the creatures attempted to sink its razor-edged fangs into my neck, but the cold steel of my gorget thwarted its attack and my blade dealt a ruinous blow in retaliation. My iron gauntlet shattered the distended jaw of the second devil just as the third pounced upon my shoulders and strove to wrest free my crested helmet. Instantly, I seized hold of the Niaughu’s cranial tentacles and wrenched the beast from me, hurling it into the mire whereupon it was torn asunder by one of D’vartha’s hulking marsh-men. The fourth fiend bared its acerose teeth and surged headlong at me, but the point of my sword was there to meet it, the blade punching through the vampyre’s sternum and out through its serrated spine.

  A deafening sound akin to a thunderclap then drew my attention and I glanced toward the barrow to see D’vartha unleashing a ruinous volley of sorcerous power from her gnarled staff. A score of Niaughu were reduced instantly to blackened husks by the coruscant energy and the witch then proceeded to disgorge another tendril of arcane power directly into the vine-wreathed mound. A gaping fissure opened instantly in the barrow’s surface and like a crimson spectre, D’vartha swiftly disappeared beyond the blackened threshold of the aperture.

  “She’s ventured into that accursed sanctum to face Esmadrunga!” I bellowed to Asenthine.

  The Alunai swordsman dragged his blade free of a Niaughu throat and turned his pallid, blood-spattered face to me. “But where is Nesadomntha? We must despatch that devil, or all is lost!”

  I spun to the shadowed barrow to behold a seemingly ceaseless throng of Niaughu fiends issuing forth from the aphotic tunnel which brooded at the mound’s base. Although we had thus far cut a glorious swath through the legions of the undead, many of the witch’s miry myrmidons had fallen and it was clear that if Nesadomntha’s hordes continued to be bolstered from the subterranean spawning-pit, the sheer weight of numbers would ultimately shift the balance of battle irrevocably against us.

  “D’vartha will stem this vile tide!” I thundered. “We need only stand firm until her work is done, then the necromancer will be ours!”

  An ominous and sepulchral growl like rolling thunder then rose above the cacophony of the battle and I descried a colossal black form begin to emerge slowly from the stygian tunnel. The mighty panther Sabarium crept malevolently forth, its iron muscles rippling beneath its sable fur, its vast scimitar fangs dripping with viscid saliva. The beast’s single baleful eye glimmered like an emerald, while its other ruined socket still bore the grisly scar wrought by Asenthine’s blade. The great cat lowered its huge head and fixed its baleful gaze upon us, languorously stalking its prey like some pitiless hunter of distant prehistory.

  Asenthine’s cold eyes narrowed. “The odds grow increasingly against us, Karnov.”

  I hefted my imbrued blade reverentially. “Then let us strive to even them… by the strength of our sword-arms and the blistering kiss of our steel!”

  Chapter IV: When Ferine Titans Clash (The Battle of the Marsh: Part II)

  The conflagrant battle raged on, the marsh now ensanguined and choked with the sundered remnants of vampyric fiends and vanquished swamp golems. The legions of Niaughu were massing and inexorably beginning to overwhelm D’vartha’s implacable, moss-encrusted horde. And yet the dwindling ranks of the miry sentinels stood firm and defiant, silently withstanding wave after wave of the ferocious vampyric assault like an immovable and verdant cliff-face defying the ceaseless crashing of a squamous sea. My indomitable steed Wrathmane continued to wreak his pitiless equine wrath upon any creature who dared to stand against him, his might bolstered inestimably by the same enchantment which even now filled my ensorcelled thews with unparalleled strength. Some yards distant, Asenthine calmly dispatched a trio of misshapen batrachian grotesqueries, his eyes grimly fixed on the slowly advancing war-panther Sabarium.

  “It will take both of us to bring that thing down,” I growled. “It’s as big as an aurochs!”

  “I think it bears me a grudge,” replied Asenthine. “Well, I’ll carve a few more pieces out of that black devil before it gets its claws into me, I swear it!”

  Half a dozen Niaughu suddenly surged shrieking from the shadows. My sword dispatched two with a single stroke and I hammered my gauntlet into the face of the third, shattering the fiend’s skull like an overly ripened melon. Roaring a battle-cry, I swept my radiant sword out in a mighty arc, the arcane steel shearing through the ribcage of the fifth creature before hacking into the neck of the sixth, sending its tentacled head spiralling through the air amidst a shower of feculent blood. Wiping foul ichor from my eyes, I glanced to where the embattled Asenthine stood and noted that the beast Sabarium had effortlessly cut down three marsh-men with primal savagery and was now crouched a mere six feet from the Alunai swordsman, poised to spring upon his nemesis and once more pit claw and fang against cold, hard steel. Before I could reach the nobleman’s side, another screeching pack of Niaughu bolted from the morass to assail me. As my crackling steel met the fiends, I beheld the bitumen panther pounce, its fearsome jaws agape. At that moment, a great shadow suddenly seemed to obscure the lambent moon. Dragging my blade free of a Niaughu’s cloven chest, I swiftly cast my gaze skywards to see a colossal black form swooping from the heavens, its vast leathern wings splayed like those of a gargantuan bat. With the force of an atramentous thunderbolt, the mist-wreathed shadow made landfall, brutally smiting Sabarium and sending the great cat reeling across the marsh. A heartbeat later, the astonished Asenthine spun to face his night-cloaked saviour.

  “Merklethenon!”

  The monstrous winged elk raised its head and gave vent to a deafening roar, its eyes aglow like rutilant embers. Abruptly, there sounded a resonant growl in response and Merklethenon wheeled his great cervine body to face Sabarium. The fearsome cat stalked slowly from the shadows, its baleful face contorted into a mask of ferine hatred. The two mighty beasts then began to circle one another at the centre of th
e benighted battlefield, their iron muscles shifting and rippling like black mercury.

  “In truth, I thought we’d seen the last of your fell steed!” I called to Asenthine.

  A grim smile crossed the swordsman’s face. “I thank the Seven Avatars of the Alunai that he found his way back to me!”

  The Niaughu fiends thronging the marsh began to fall back from the bizarre confrontation, giving the beasts ample space to wage their preternatural battle. Like two savage statues born of hoary myth and imbued with sinister life, Merklethenon and Sabarium eyed each other guardedly, their colossal bodies pulsing and heaving as if animated by the unerring hand of some otherworldly artisan. Then, uttering a stentorian roar, Sabarium pounced, his adamantine claws glimmering murderously in the moonlight. Merklethenon instantly lowered his head, brandishing his jagged antlers and meeting the great cat’s powerful attack. Dragging my gaze from the primal duel of titans, I hammered my sword down into the flesh of a hissing Niaughu, cleaving the creature cleanly from its collarbone to its hip. From the reeking mire, another group of devils rushed headlong at me, their charge duly met by my unyielding steel. Nearly all of D’vartha’s swamp golems had now fallen to the overwhelming might of the vampyric hordes, and yet the great barrow continued to disgorge an unending throng of the foul aberrations. In the midst of that desperate battle, I grinned wolfishly, for I knew that every Niaughu which fell before my sword only served to bolster my eldritch might. My rune-etched raiment was ablaze with cerulean light, its ceaselessly burgeoning luminosity casting a fulgent glow across the charnel-marsh, the sigils engraved into its surface burning like spectral beacons. So potent had the ghostly aura become that the flesh of any fiend who made contact with me was now immediately seared by the terrible, preternatural cold which my armour radiated. I had never before experienced power of this magnitude, and as I continued to carve a blood-sodden path through the multitudes, I found myself wondering if indeed there was any limit to the arcane might of the enchantment.