Gilead's Blood

by Dan Abnett

  Madoc sprang in, blocking the downward blow. The broadsword shattered.

  Calmly, Maura looked around for a fresh weapon and found Cloden’s greatsword lying in the mud. Effortlessly, he swung the massive blade of Carroburg. The Murderer smashed Madoc away, reopening his throat wound.

  Dolph’s mace crashed into the Murderer’s side, denting the golden armour. It was like striking a boulder with a twig.

  Maura roared and turned about, transfixing Dolph through the torso on the length of the greatsword. He lifted the Ostmarker clean off the ground. Then he shook him off the blade, like a cat suddenly bored of the dead vermin it had been playing with.

  Dolph’s armoured corpse slammed into Fithvael as he ran forward in horror, and the weight dropped him like a cannonball. Fithvael felt something in his left leg snap as he went down under the heavy, metal-shrouded mass.

  Maura turned to meet Harg, who raged at him like an angered bear. Hargen Hardradasson, lord of the faraway fjords and ice lands, was berserk, frothing at the mouth, channelling his battle-madness into each swing of his axe.

  He was a terror to behold, but Maura met that terror and smashed open the old face wound almost precisely along the jagged line that had been there for twenty summers. Harg fell, trying to hold his face together, yowling like a wounded wolf in a trap.

  Maura hefted Cloden’s smoking blade above Harg’s bowed head and muttered something in Tilean.

  The blow never fell.

  Shadowfast, Gilead was there in an eye-blink, his blade, his dead brother’s blue-steel blade, ripping into Maura.

  Maura reeled and fell back, deep gouges across his ornate chest plate, some of which oozed blood. By the time he managed to throw a swing of his own, Gilead had slashed the Murderer’s chest plate clean away with his blade.

  The two of them, swords scything, battled across the camp clearing. The whirling greatsword nicked Gilead’s precious sword again and again, and ripped away the elf’s long shield.

  Dragging himself clear of poor, dead Dolph, wincing as the broken bone-ends ground at every move, Fithvael watched them battle. Part of him was proud of Gilead, part of him deathly afraid. He wanted to see this as titans clashing, as was written in the myths, but all he could think of were monsters assailing each other. He saw Maura rip open Gilead’s shoulder, saw Gilead thrust his longsword clean through Maura’s thigh.

  They were both washed with blood. Maura was driving Gilead back into the edges of the woods, where the land fell away sheer to the valley floor. Sword against sword, return, pass, parry, clash, steel of Tor Anrok against Carroburg power.

  Then they were lost from view in the brambles and the trees. It was treacherous in the sheer woods. Cliffs of mud, loosened by the storm, poured cascades of dark water down into the clearings below. Plunge pools had formed in the dark crevices of the escarpment.

  Neither would break. Maura, a powerhouse, swung the greatsword two-handed with all the deftness its master Cloden had ever shown. Gilead sliced and chopped, parried and stabbed, instinctively recalling every move and pass he had been taught.

  By his father; by Fithvael te tuin, master-at-arms; by dead Nithrom, so many years ago.

  Maura hit Gilead in the face, ripping open a wound that would leave a scar for the rest of his life. Blinking aside the blood, Gilead threw himself at Maura. The pair lost their footing and went over the edge of a mud cliff, falling through a cascade of rain-flood into a basin below.

  They hit the water in a spray, churning round to find each other. Maura was weighed down by his armour and his massive weapon, but still he came up first.

  They were chest-deep in the water. Maura hacked at Gilead, but his greatsword’s blade struck only the water.

  Gilead pushed himself at Maura and the two of them fell again, down the next flash-flood cliff, through another cascade, into another churning pool.

  Gilead surfaced first, but Maura had struck below the water. The greatsword stuck into Gilead through the left hip. The water swirling around them went darker still.

  Maura surfaced, snorting and hacking inside his hound’s-skull helm. He twisted the blade under the water.

  Gilead screamed. And in his rage sliced the helmeted head clean off with the blue-steel blade forged in Tor Anrok so long ago, Galeth’s blade.

  Maura’s head bobbed away in the current, washing over on another cascade, still encased and unseen in its helmet.

  Gilead, the greatsword still through him, sank to his knees in the bloodstained water, and began to drown.

  SO, THERE IT is, just as I promised you. The tale of the Battle of Maltane, in all particulars. A better, more rousing, bloodier tale of heroism you’ll never hear at my fireside.

  What’s that you say? Ah, but there’s always one! Why can’t you be content? Must I really tie up all the loose ends?

  Very well. No, he did not drown. Bruda found him. She was weak from her wounds, but she had seen the battlers slide over the edge. She found Gilead and dragged him out of the pool and blew life back into his lungs with her own mouth.

  The greatsword? They never found it. As he sank, Gilead must have pulled it out. It is rusting, even now, in a glade pool west of Maltane, I am sure. Cloden had to travel back to his homeland to get another and that, as I understand, was an adventure in itself.

  Well, yes, of course Cloden lived. His shoulder was never quite the same, of course, but he went on to greater things. Had a warrior band of his own, so I am told. Never lost his touch with the greatsword, to the end of his days.

  Harg? Well, he had the same scar as before, just fresher. I have no idea what eventually happened to him, but every winter I get sent another bearskin and a flask of foul Norse mead. I like to think he’s probably a king again somewhere, somewhere frozen and uninviting.

  And Vintze, it took him a while to mend, and the winters still make his chest ache. He rode with Cloden, so I heard. I saw him ten years or so back, in Vinsbrugge. He had a snowy beard by then, and further scars. We had a drink to the old times. But he’s probably dead now.

  Bruda? Like I said, she lived. She spent the winter in Maltane, healing up, then was gone by spring. I don’t know how many years after that she survived. I always liked her tremendously, though. Well, yes, I am old, and thank you for mentioning it! But believe me, I can still recall how handsome a woman is!

  Madoc? It took a long time with him. Bad wound. But you know he survived. The legends of the Silent Wolf are commonplace in this neck of the woods and beyond. Yes, that is him. The very one.

  What more do you want? Oh yes, Brom and Drunn led the evacuees down the tunnel and out into the woods. Fifty villagers they saved that way. Drunn stayed on as headman, as you know, elected year after year after year for his bravery. Yes, I miss him too.

  Master Brom, he was never the same after his twin was gone. He and Gilead had so much alike in that, but I don’t think they ever spoke about it. Elves, heh? Too close. Brom… heh… I sometimes think about him and wonder where he ended up. Alone, truly alone, wherever it was.

  Ah, what’s that? Be patient. I was saving that part. Pour me another cup. Good.

  Of course, the Tileans broke when Maura died. They never found his head, did I mention that? And actually, they broke long before that. Right after Dolph’s explosion. The heart was out of them by then. They came at Maltane with a warhost maybe four hundred strong and left fully three-quarters on the fields and the slopes around the town. That’s quite a thing, don’t you think?

  I’m getting tired and my cup is half-empty. What more do you want?

  Oh, of course, of course.

  When the Tileans had fled, the company went up to the inner mound, which was all ablaze by then. But they got the wounded and the infirm out of the scarcement all the same. Add those to the evacuees, and you’ll see that Nithrom’s band saved seventy-seven folk from Maltane. Not that there was a lot of Maltane left by then. It took us years to rebuild.

  Oh, hush now. Very well, since you persist, they fou
nd young Erill in the courtyard, where Galvin had carried… him. Only the two of them had survived. No one knows what happened exactly, but they found the beast Hroncic’s head in the temple, lying on Sigmar’s altar.

  The survivors burned Le Claux, Caerdrath, Nithrom, Gaude and Dolph on a great pyre, with full honours and much mourning. It was only fit.

  The last I saw of the two elves was when they rode away one misty spring morning. They had wintered here to heal and left in the spring, just after Bruda. Both of them still limped when they walked.

  No, I don’t know where they were going. I don’t think they knew either. I doubt Master Fithvael was going to stay with Gilead much longer. His companion had become so surly and withdrawn that winter.

  Who am I to say? Maybe they’re still travelling this sorry world together even now.

  I liked Fithvael. He had a soul. His lord, well, I’m not too sure. I would doubt he’ll ever find what he’s looking for, but I know that losing the scent here, with Caerdrath’s death, was one of the worst things that ever happened to him. The dark cloud that lived over him glowered over all of us that winter, and though I feel churlish to say it, it was almost a relief when that elven lord departed.

  I think of them from time to time. I do wonder whatever happened to them. I suppose they just faded away and were forgotten. Like all myths, and, Sigmar help me, the land is full of them!

  Me? I’ve been content to stay here in Maltane all these seasons, until now I am old and bent. Yes, my eye still hurts me, usually in winter when the wind bites and cuts into this old patch.

  It often pleases me that I was part of a myth, given that this land is so full of them. I miss my father, though… if father he truly was to me. Certainly, I believe that to be so. And I never did learn what this glorious sword of his is called.