Beyond the Bulwarks

by K. J. Coble

Durrim shot Skarvus a questioned look before facing his father again. “I don’t know what you are speaking of.”

  “Of course, you don’t!” Eyeloth snarled before regaining his composure. “While you have nuzzled at Theregond’s heel we have endured evil that comes in the night, evil that snatches away souls screaming into the Endless Hells.” He trembled and put the back of his hand to his lips. “Even Orkall no longer hears the pleas of Caerigoth as darkness seeps from the cracks of these mountains to feed.”

  The blonde was at Eyeloth’s ear again, furious whispers lost in the patter of falling rain. Straedus began to argue a point but was silenced by a chopping motion from the king, whose smile spread again, chill as a lone flower pushing up through early spring snow crust.

  “Father,” Durrim declared, “whatever it is that plagues your halls, you must know that your son will put it right.”

  “Yes...” Eyeloth folded his hands together contemplatively. The blonde started up again but he pushed him away. “Yes, I see it. You seek the path back into my hall, boy?”

  “I want nothing more.”

  “Good.” Eyeloth extended a hand into the distance. “The ruins to the south, where not even the vultures will roost...priests went there when the evil began, knowing they are a place where it is night even in broad daylight. Only one returned, his mind blasted and his words lunacy until his ravings killed him. He said the seals that have lain over them since our people have known these mountains were broken. The evil has been with us ever since.”

  Skarvus drew his breath sharply. Thalien whispered something into the old warrior’s ear. Durrim’s shoulders sagged.

  “Go there, boy who would be my son again. Go and cleanse them of this evil. Then, maybe, you will be welcomed back into our hall again.”

  “Then...” Durrim’s voice cracked. “Then you will hear—truly hear—what I have to say?”

  Eyeloth glanced at the men around him. “If you come back...yes, I will.”

  ***

  Rain pattered against the benighted forest canopy, snarled as it fell into the campfire of Durrim’s entourage. Firelight picked out frowns and cavernous shadows. A scattering of Hamrak camp followers and a few of the less haggard Flinarr women—picked from their Flinarr men with victory—paced the dark around the edge of the warriors’ circle, bearing wine pitchers, refilling earthenware mugs as the men drained them and gnawed at food scraps without comment. Occasionally, a note clanged as Thalien fingered his harp absently, discordant and without feeling.

  Varya hovered behind Anzo and Heathen, a leaky, leather trencher in her hands. Her face tightened with some inner reverie even Heathen’s grunt for more wine had not broken. Anzo turned with an empty mug. When she didn’t respond he tugged at a mud-drenched skirt. She shook herself and poured.

  “Look at them,” she whispered as the wine slopped into their chipped cups. “What can have shaken them so, Anzo Severnus?”

  Durrim was rising on the other side of the fire as she spoke. “I think we’re about to find out,” Anzo replied.

  “I can ask none of you to follow in this quest,” Durrim said to his warriors. “We all know the doom my father has tasked me to.”

  Rumbles began amongst the men. Skarvus shot to his feet. “It’s a trap and your father—curse the old dog...I’m sorry my Prince, but he is—knows that!” Growls of agreement joined Skarvus’ words.

  Durrim nodded glumly. “Aye, that may be. But it is the way back into his hall.”

  Skarvus spat into the blaze. “Those ruins are the doorway to Hell.”

  “What way would you have me take, my old shield-closer?” Durrim asked with a sad smile. “Would you have us break against the walls of Caerigoth, instead?”

  “At least it would be a man’s death, my Prince.”

  “No.” Durrim fingered his mug as he stared hollowly into its depths. “It would just be death.” He looked up at his entourage. “I did not come here to slay my father or our own people. So, I will accept his charge.”

  Skarvus looked around for support. When none came, he shook his head. “Very well, if you must, I will go with you.”

  Heathen came to his feet and pumped his axe before him. “I am new to your party, but I am with you, too.”

  Stupid kid. Groaning, and with Varya’s gasp behind him, Anzo struggled to his feet. “And I.”

  The rest of the retinue boiled to their feet, voices and mugs raised.

  “No.” Durrim waved them down. “No, my brave friends, it cannot be you all. Some must stay behind. You have kin within the walls of Caerigoth who suffer without you, pray for your return. I cannot deprive them of you all. I have stolen too much from them already.” His fingers played about his mug. Finally, he raised it to his warriors. “But a few of you—” his eyes darted towards Anzo “—yes, a few of you I think Orkall can spare to me.”

  He put the mug to his lips and drank deeply. The Hamrak did the same.

  “What of these ruins, this evil?” Varya called from the shadows.

  Hamrak faces clenched into angry quiet, did not look her way. Damn it. Anzo hissed and turned, held out his mug. “Wine.”

  Varya’s eyes caught the fire, sparkled with fury that began to purple with the witch’s fire.

  “Wine, woman.” Anzo’s arm began to shake. Not now, lady! Damn your Thothan, Aurridian pride, not now!

  The blaze sputtered from her stare and grudgingly Varya poured for him. Anzo knew he’d pay for the drink later.

  “She is spirited and flaps her gums when she should not,” Anzo said, turning from her so abruptly the wine splashed his forearm, “but she asks the question I would. What thing is so horrible that the mighty Hamrak quaver at the very hint of it?”

  Durrim’s hand trembled slightly about his mug. “It is not a story for wine and the fireside, but since we have no hall to call our own...” He nodded to Thalien.

  The bard plucked a few strings of his harp and appeared ready for a song, but set the instrument aside, instead, and paced into the smoky heart of the warriors’ circle.

  “Many are the tales before the time of Orkall and the Gods men would worship. They speak of the Great Emptiness before Light and Steel and the beings that languished there and ruled in their cold, reckless hate.” He swept an arm into the night in a theatrical gesture, caught in his tale, but tense with the knowledge that comes when stories stride suddenly into reality. “Always have we feared the old ruins to the south, ancient when the mountains rose from the sea. We speak of them to scare our babes—when we speak of them, at all.

  “Beings, entities, something lies in blackness and old, old death beneath those rune-etched seals that now, it is said, are broken.” Thalien’s voice snagged with a tremor. “Brave fools have quested there, Kings and Princes. Men of better songs and voices than I possess have passed the stories down to me, though I will not fill your hearts with such darkness tonight. Know only that few have ever returned and those that have—” he offered Durrim a tight smile “—it is as your father says: their minds have been wreckage and their souls sucked as marrow from a bone.”

  Varya drew a tight breath.

  “Do you suggest, my harper, that such a fate awaits me?” Durrim grinned lopsidedly to steal some of the fear from the suggestion.

  “I do not, my Prince.” But the sag of the bard’s shoulders belied his proudly-spoken answer. “And I will go with you, seeking to find a new tale, a better tale to end the cycle of my forebears.”

  “We all will, by Orkall’s weeping ass!” Skarvus roared to the swelling acclamation of the entourage. “To the Hells with Eyeloth and to the Hells with ancient evils!”

  Durrim’s grin expanded. He turned to accept another pour of wine from a camp follower and offered it to his men. “To cleansing these lands, to reuniting our people, and to glory!”

  The Hamrak bellowed their approval with shaken fists and splashed wine mugs.

  “Why do I wonder if we wouldn’t have been better with Greaus and his monster-whore?�
� Heathen rumbled before emptying his mug.

  Chapter Eight

  Tomb of the Elder Tyrant

  Nine would follow the Durrim: Skarvus, Thalien, Anzo, Heathen, and five young Hamrak with nothing left behind and reputations to make before them. At the edge of the woods below Caerigoth in a desultory rain, they said their farewells.

  Anzo watched Varya, her hood thrown back to let the drizzle speckle her drawn face, speak softly to Heathen. The giant rumbled something vaguely reassuring and touched her shoulder. She pulled herself against him, whispered something that triggered a chuckle like building thunder. He stepped away from her, shook his axe in a half-hearted display of confidence and joined Anzo in the sagging scrub grass. Her eyes settled on him.

  A few of the camp followers were exchanging quick kisses and longer embraces with the others. Skarvus’ face softened for a moment in some melancholy-tinged memory at the brittle goodbyes. Durrim waited apart from the others, helm low over his eyes and the haze of the rain hiding his expression. He seemed terribly alone.

  Varya stepped out from under the cover of the trees, raindrops darkening her tunic. “Anzo Severnus...”

  “We’re leaving you again,” Anzo sighed.

  “I’ll be with you.” She was fishing something from the folds of her cloak. “Take this.” She held up to him a chunk of amber attached to a crude leather thong. “I got it from one of the Hamrak girls. They make these trinkets for their men when they go into battle.” An uncomfortable smile twisted her lips. “I...may have added a little something else to it, just for you.”

  “Varya...”

  “Take it.” She snaked her hands around his neck and he didn’t have the energy to stop her as she tied the thong. Finished, she gave it a satisfied pat at his chest. “It may provide some succor to you.” The smile slipped from her tight face as her voice chilled. “You will have some of my power of protection now. It’s not much, but it may stay things that reach from beyond this world.”

  “I don’t understand,” Anzo said.

  “Neither do I. That’s what scares me.” She stepped back from him but held on to his hand. “I hope your amateur’s luck holds.”

  Anzo started to say more but could only manage his lopsided grin. “I...ah...I’ve heard that Orkall takes care of the brave.”

  She stepped into his arms and squeezed. “Forget the gods. I will be with you.” She broke away before the embrace could linger and strode back to the protection of the woods. Trembling hands flipped the cowl over her head as she disappeared into the trees. She never looked back.

  “If all of you are done...?” Durrim grumbled good-naturedly. His gaze found Anzo’s. “Weasel?”

  Anzo grimaced as laughter from the Hamrak warmed the icy downpour. He joined Heathen at the rear of the party as they started off into the soaking gloom. The giant elbowed him. “Seems you’ve acquired a new name, friend.”

  Anzo glared at the huge boy. “You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, would you?”

  “It’s better than Slayer.”

  “It is, at that.” Anzo shivered and drew his cloak about him. “But no less accurate.”

  ***

  Durrim’s party clambered across the spine of the Bulwarks for two days. Fog wreathed the mountain tops, daytime allowing weakly shafts of sunlight through to unravel it in cotton strands that wove together again in a ghostly blanket with night. Rain hammered into their faces, chill wind crystallizing it occasionally into sleet that stung the flesh in a thousand icy bites. The woods groaned and writhed. The very ground, slick with muck and glistening leaf mould appeared to protest their passage.

  They posted guards through the evenings, shifts that all dreaded, wrapped in cloaks, hands light on sword hilts that bit to the touch. The dark swam with mist that the imagination—and perhaps more—gave life it would not possess by the touch of day. With dawn came the crackle of frost being shaken from blankets as men crowded close to feeble fires and bleary eyes shimmered with fresh nightmares.

  Afternoon of the third day saw a change of course, a descent into the hazy dark of a long, meandering gorge, its heights crowned with sandstone outcroppings that frowned down upon the company like battlements of a city long-swallowed by the passage of the ages. The forest thinned, undergrowth crisped and crumbling under footfalls, trees stripped of foliage and gnarled. Boulders slick with condensation became common, element-worn crags appearing as faces from the fog.

  Skarvus took the lead as a warmthless sun glimmered through the overcast. Durrim fell out to one side, mustache sagging, his green eyes haunted under furiously bunching brows. Patting Heathen on ahead of him, Anzo peeled off to join the prince.

  “Something troubles my lord?” Anzo asked.

  “Aye,” the younger man grunted, “the knowledge that we are near the end of our journey.”

  Anzo fidgeted with his cloak, his hand straying near Varya’s bauble. “Have you come this way before?”

  Durrim didn’t answer right away, lips working under his whiskers. “None of us have ever come this far. But, yes, I know the way.” He took a breath. “It’s considered one of the great trials of manhood to spend a night at the edge of the gorge. I did it, with others. We built a bonfire about where we camped last night and stayed up through the eve, drinking, dancing with our torsos painted in the old way, singing the stories of our prowess and bravery.” He snorted and shook his head “None showed enough courage to actually enter, of course. Even with the wine roaring in our blood, the whispers kept us away.”

  His skin beginning to worm under his tunic, Anzo tried to meet the other’s gaze. “Whispers?”

  “Yes...” Durrim’s eyes remained fixed into some unknowable distance and he shuddered. “By Orkall, man, do you not hear them?”

  Anzo cast about in the surrounding waste, senses straining. A wind set the trees to clattering up and down the ravine, a bony host rustling together in agitation. Vapors twisted and bunched in tendrils about the crags, rose up in plumes in the wake of the passing party.

  “I hear nothing,” Anzo replied. Curse these superstitious oafs; it’s just cold and fatigue! Why must men always assign demons to their fears? But the crawling of his flesh didn’t stop. Varya’s words haunted his courage. We knew dark powers had awakened...

  “You are a brave fool, Weasel,” Durrim said and clapped Anzo on the shoulder. “It’s good to have such as you along.”

  Shouts rent the mists.

  Durrim lurched past Anzo. Cursing the funk he’d caught from the younger man, Anzo hastened to catch up. The ground grew rocky and uncertain as they dashed to the sound of the disturbance. A creek burbled amongst gravel and rock glittering with hoarfrost, its cold song echoing against black rock faces looming to either side. The gorge had narrowed tightly into a corridor, crags sweeping together until they met in a splintered half dome, leaving only a sliver of light to squirm through and speckle the waters, sloshing and pooling about their feet.

  The pair came stumbling to a place where the fog fell away and they found the rest of the company waited in frigid silence. At the end of the corridor, practically hidden in clutching shadows, a columned arch wrought in gleaming obsidian held a double door cast from the same material.

  “The ruins...” Thalien breathed.

  Icewater trickled through Anzo as he looked upon the black entrance, squatting there like some glassy spider awaiting prey. The rock around it sagged inward, pocked with age, softened with patches of moss that spoke of timelessness and the warm breast of nature. But the doorway flickered coldly at them, seemed to possess echoes of an intelligence before time, a malice as hard and alien as the sharp angles and weird symmetries that shifted with the feeble light, almost moving as Anzo regarded them.

  Durrim ripped his sword from its sheath. “Well...we’ve come.” He looked around at the men. “Orkall’s Eye is upon us all.”

  Skarvus grunted and unsheathed his weapon. “Let the Old Bastard’s besotted breath be in our nostrils, then.” The g
orge rang with readied weapons.

  Durrim led the way, the others falling in at his sides. Anzo followed at his flank, his hand finding Varya’s charm at his chest rather than his saber. He might have imagined it, but the amber warmed to his palm.

  The babble of the creek swelled to a maddening racket as they crept towards the entrance. A pool filled the lozenge-shaped rear of the corridor, swirled before the black doors. The party split and skirted its edges, nervous glances cast across. A whorl of tarry black traced a lazy, serpent pattern across the surface. Edgy breaths frosted in the chill of crowding-in stone.

  Durrim reached the entryway first and paused, sword shivering in his fist before stilling. A booted foot rose to plant on the first of four black steps leading to the doors.

  “Don’t,” Anzo said hoarsely. He sidled past the prince. “Let me.”

  He took the first step with confidence he didn’t feel, leaping up the remaining three in haste to come to stand before the doors. Cold twisted its way up through his boots, clutched in his calves before continuing up into his guts. With a long sigh he forced himself to look at the barrier before him.

  Hatchmarked script marched across the obsidian surfaces, carved in sure strokes, but jagged and wobbling. He rubbed his eyes after a few moments. Cool sweat gathered in his brows. The strange characters couldn’t have been writhing before him, could they?

  Heathen leaned close and extended his axe before him, gingerly rang it against a bulbous knob at the center where the doors met. “Stop,” Anzo growled, but he already had his hand on the door, before he even realized what he was doing. Obsidian greeted his flesh with ice. The carvings under his fingertips held no life.

  It was just a doorway.

  “My lord,” Skarvus rumbled. He flicked his eyes skyward. “The sun.”

  The gaze of the party followed. Swirls of overcast had taken the light from the sky. What illumination dappled the gorge flickered and died away. A new cold clenched in rocks and in flesh, the breath of night coming fast.

  Durrim sheathed his blade and touched the doors. Fingers traced the crease between them. Then he pushed. Nothing happened. He leaned a shoulder against them and tried again. Anzo joined in the effort, Heathen from the other side, and the three of them leaned in hard.