by Dan Abnett
The liquor seethed inside Malus’ guts, but it also returned a small measure of strength to his limbs. Steeling himself, he finished off the cup. “Reminds me of the time I drank some lamp oil as a child,” he said hoarsely. “Honestly, the oil had more flavour.”
“It is a dwarf liquor called barvalk,” the witch said, taking the cup from him. “Dark riders carry it on cold winter nights. It keeps the blood hot and the mind sharp.”
“Probably takes the tarnish off silver as well,” he muttered, but silently admitted that his limbs had begun to loosen and his mind was alert and awake. With a rueful grin he levered himself fully upright and stretched his arms and shoulders.
The witch was well within reach. Her stare was guileless and her manner relaxed. It would take no effort at all to seize her and close his hands around her neck. But what then, Malus thought? Was she the witch that had felled him in the wood with but a single touch? He could not tell. And even if he did slay her, what then? He was surrounded by more than a dozen warriors, and even if he could somehow fight his way free, the Endless had already demonstrated they could track him easily with their magic.
Malus’ shoulders slumped within the confines of his armour. Putting him in irons was redundant. There was nowhere he could go, and they knew it.
Then he remembered what Eldire had told him: the path to the fifth relic leads to Naggarond.
It was just possible that falling into the clutches of the Endless was a blessing in disguise.
“All right,” Malus said, trying to sound resigned to his fate. “What next?”
The witch rose to her feet. “There is food prepared in the tent yonder,” she said, pointing over Malus’ shoulder. “If you are hungry, eat. We will be riding through the night and will not pause again until midday tomorrow.”
Malus nodded. In truth, food was the last thing on his mind at that point, but better to fuel mind and body while he could. “Where is my mount?”
The witch turned and inclined her gleaming mask towards the line of trees to the north. “Your cold one is being tended to there, beyond the camp,” she said. “Go to it after you have broken your fast, and wait for the order to depart.”
Without so much as a farewell the witch began to walk away. “Wait!” Malus called. “What is your name?”
The druchii paused. Her head turned slightly, moonlight glinting on one rounded cheek. “I have no name,” she said, childlike amusement in her voice. “I am Endless.” Without waiting for a reply she joined a group of figures packing saddlebags nearby. Soon Malus couldn’t tell for sure which of the identical figures was her.
The highborn shook his head wearily and clambered to his feet. Malekith’s bodyguards continued breaking camp swiftly and efficiently, hardly sparing their prisoner a sideways glance. Not twenty yards to the south a caravan of flesh merchants were driving their wheeled cages northward up the Slaver’s Road, heading for Karond Kar. He listened to the drovers curse the stolid oxen as they went, harangued in turn by the slave master and his sons. One of the young druchii slavers looked up at that moment and stared curiously at the small encampment. He saw Malus watching him and raised his coiled scourge in salute.
Malus raised his hand in return, and the young slaver spurred his horse and cantered to the head of the caravan. Still shaking his head, the highborn headed for the tent that the witch had indicated, hoping that the bodyguards had brought some meat and cheese, and perhaps a bit of decent wine.
Once camp was broken and the baggage packed the Endless set a gruelling pace as they bore their prisoner back to Naggarond. Mounted on their preternatural steeds the masked druchii rode all through the night and half of the following day before finally calling a halt in the middle of a cold and desultory rain.
Horses snorted and stamped, their breath pluming in the chilly air as they were led off the road into the tall grass. The animals paid no heed at all to the cold one in their midst; sired from thoroughbred stock brought from drowned Nagarythe, the dark steeds were foaled in the sorcerous stables of Naggarond itself, and feared neither man nor beast. Cousins to the dark steeds that the kingdom’s messengers rode, they were fleet as storm winds when given their head, and could run for days without tiring.
For Spite’s part, the nauglir paid little heed to anything, including Malus himself. Since the encounter with the Endless near their camp in the woods, the cold one had been strangely subdued and passive, following commands as meekly as a whipped slave. On the road the cold one loped along at the same pace as the rest of the party, ignoring the highborn’s subtle commands.
The nauglir followed the horses off the road and settled onto its haunches, its head perking up a bit at the welcome caress of the rain. Malus slid from the saddle and tried to stretch the kinks out of his hips and shoulders. Though no stranger to hard riding, more than fourteen hours in the saddle left him feeling as though he’d been beaten with a club.
Masked druchii slid effortlessly from their saddles and silently inspected their mounts, checking hooves, muscles and tendons with expert hands. Malus did the same for Spite, although the highborn was checking for telltales of a very different kind.
He found the cluster of magical runes within moments, painted with some kind of indigo dye onto the nauglir’s bony skull. The rain had no effect on them, nor did they blur when he rubbed them with his thumb. Malus patted Spite’s neck resignedly. The Endless had usurped his control over his own mount and effectively turned Spite into a jailer of sorts. He couldn’t spur the cold one to turn on the riders even if he wanted to.
With nothing else to do, Malus leaned against Spite’s flank and waited. After a few minutes one of the warriors made his way down the line, holding a bottle of barvalk and half a sausage. Malus steeled himself and took the proffered cup when his turn came, then wolfed down a thick slice of sausage. As soon as the warrior had finished making his rounds he jogged back to the head of the line and without a word the Endless climbed back into the saddle. Their midday break had lasted little more than fifteen minutes.
They rode through the rest of the day and well into the night. Ahead of them went the dragon banner of the Witch King of Naggaroth, and slave caravans travelling in either direction pulled aside and waited with heads bowed as the black riders thundered past. It was nearly four hours past sunset when the Endless finally called a halt, leading their mounts off the road and preparing a cold meal by witchlight. Cold, wet and aching from head to toe, Malus pulled his bedroll from the saddle and fell wearily to the ground beside Spite.
No sooner had he closed his eyes than one of the witches was kneeling beside him with a handful of salted fish and a hunk of bread wrapped in a greasy square of cloth. He took the food without thinking, his exhausted brain only dimly aware that it was close to midnight and the warriors were climbing back in their saddles again. Groaning, the highborn stowed his bedroll and climbed back onto his mount. He ate his meagre rations as they rode.
By the end of the second evening the black riders had reached the western end of the Sea of Malice, and were within a day’s ride of the great crossroads where the Slaver’s Road met the Spear Road
as it headed north to the Wastes. The ration of barvalk at each rest stop had grown more generous, and Malus found himself growing accustomed to the taste. It didn’t relieve the aches and pains of the endless ride but it made them slightly more tolerable. As the riders ate and rested, Malus resisted his body’s demand for sleep and spent the time carefully arranging his bags. He dug into the pack where three of the daemon’s relics were hid and fished out the wrapped bundle that contained the Idol of Kolkuth. He could feel the coldness of the brass figure through the layers of frayed cloth as he set it atop the rest of the bag’s contents. During the day’s travel he’d worked out a plan of escape. Once the Endless had got him inside the Iron Fortress he would wait until the last moment before seizing the idol and using its power to transport himself away from his captors. He felt certain that once he was inside the fortress he coul
d find ample hiding places from which to begin his hunt for the Amulet of Vaurog.
Providing, of course, that the witches couldn’t simply use their shades to locate him once more—and that their sorcerous hold on Spite didn’t force the nauglir to turn on his own master.
The Endless rotated their riders through different points in their formation as they travelled; Malus wasn’t sure of the reason why, unless perhaps it was to limit their exposure to him as much as possible. After the second day he thought to start a conversation with one of the witches riding beside him, and was surprised when she answered every question he put to her. She told him how the Endless were given to the Iron Fortress as babes, taken as a sort of tithe from each of the highborn families in Naggarond. The witches received training by Morathi herself, while the warriors were taught by a highborn named Lord Nuarc, the finest warlord in the Witch King’s warband. They served Malekith until death, at which point their mask and gear were given to a waiting neophyte. There were always a thousand of the Endless, guarding the precincts of the Iron Fortress and marching with the Witch King when the druchii went to war.
From what Malus could determine, the bodyguards wanted for nothing and possessed not a shred of independent thought or ambition. They were essentially incorruptible, a realization that both frustrated and horrified him at the same time.
Tempted by the witch’s loquacity and her apparent lack of guile, Malus asked her how they’d managed to find him. “It must have been sorcery,” he said offhandedly. “How else would you have known to look in a nameless clearing in the middle of a vast forest?”
“We are all trained in shade-casting,” the witch replied. Her childlike voice was tinged with surprise, as though it were the most obvious question in the world. “It is nothing to summon a fetch and have it search for you, providing you have the subject’s name.”
“A fetch?” Malus asked.
The witch giggled behind her silver mask. “The weakest of shades; little more than a fragment of spirit essence, intelligent enough to command but utterly devoid of will or initiative. They can be set to simple tasks, but their reach isn’t very long.” She regarded Malus with a condescending shake of her head. Tm surprised you know so little, given your demonstration in the forest.”
“My knowledge is… specialised,” Malus replied. “You say their reach is short?”
She nodded. “Yes. They have little strength of their own, and must depend upon the energies of the summoner to remain active in the physical realm. A shade-caster can command a fetch over a few dozen miles, perhaps, but no more.”
The highborn looked away, pretending to study the faint line of Dachlan Keep in order to mask his frown of dismay. A dozen miles, he thought? Not much distance for a sorcerer, perhaps, but that would mean he would have to use the idol to leave Naggarond completely in order to escape their reach. Perhaps if he could find a place to hide somewhere in the nearby hills and then use the idol to come and go from the fortress…
Suddenly he straightened in the saddle. Malus turned to the witch. “You said that a fetch couldn’t reach for more than a few dozen miles?”
“Of course,” she replied.
“Then how did you know where to look for me? I could have been in Har Ganeth, or on the road to Karond Kar—I could have been at sea aboard a corsair, for the Dark Mother’s sake.”
The witch shrugged. “We were told to look for you along the Slaver’s Road,” she said.
And how did Malekith know that, Malus thought? He was certain that he wasn’t going to like the answer.
They came upon the crossroads at well past midnight of the fourth day The air was cool and clear, and the highborn shivered in the saddle from exhaustion as much as dread as the riders slowed their mounts to a walk and passed among the forest of burning souls.
The last time Malus had been this way was at the head of a small army, marching south to conquer Hag Graef in the name of Balneth Bale. The withered figures, wired to tall iron poles all around the crossroads and set alight with sorcerous fire, had held little terror for him then. Now he found himself listening to their faint, maddened cries and dreading the sight of the empty stake that the Witch King had set aside for him. Only those highborn who’d broken Malekith’s laws were sentenced to burn at the crossroads, some lingering in agony for years as the elements wore away their bodies inch by inch. As Malus rode among the guttering lamps that used to be powerful men he could not help but tremble at the fate that awaited him. He reached back and checked the bag where the idol was kept, making certain he could reach it quickly when the time came.
On the other side of the crossroads lay a narrow ribbon of road that gleamed ghostly white under the moonlight. The Hateful Road
led to Naggarond alone, and was paved with the skulls of a hundred thousand elves. The hooves of the dark steeds clattered hollowly on the magically treated bones and the riders sat straighter in the saddle as they drew closer to home.
The road wound among dark, lifeless hills and through echoing hollows dense with oak and ash, while in the distance the high walls and pointed towers of Naggarond rose ever higher into the indigo sky. Glimmering witchlight shone like a thousand eyes from the buildings of the fortress city, lending it a kind of cold, brooding life. This was not a place built upon ruthless power like Hag Graef, or stained with bloodlust like Har Ganeth—Naggarond was black, eternal hate quarried from cold marble and unyielding iron. It was the implacable heart of the druchii given form.
They travelled the Hateful Road
for another hour, until finally they crested a rocky ridge and came upon a flat, featureless plain that stretched between the curving arms of a bleak mountainside. Naggarond curled upon itself like an enormous dragon upon the plain, surrounded by a gleaming wall nearly sixty feet high. Tall towers bristling with iron spikes rose from the wall every mile or so along its length, sited to rain clouds of arrows and heavy stones upon any invader. Ahead, Malus could see a massive gatehouse that was a small fortress unto itself, looming over a double portal wrought from slabs of polished iron nearly twenty feet high. The highborn shook his head in wonder. He’d once thought that Hag Graef’s fortifications were fearsome, but nothing compared to Naggarond’s forbidding bulk.
The dark riders led their steeds directly across the plain and approached the iron gates. No challenge issued from the gatehouse’s jagged battlements; evidently the mere sight of the gleaming silver masks of the Endless was sufficient. With a terrible, echoing groan one of the massive gates swung open and the column trotted down a long, wide tunnel that ran beneath the gatehouse. Darkness pressed in from all sides, and the highborn fought to keep from hunching his shoulders at the thought of the murder holes and oil flues that doubtless pierced the stone overhead.
Malus expected to emerge from the tunnel into a large, open square, much as in the style of other druchii cities. Instead he found himself in a narrow lane overlooked by tall, stone buildings with deep-set oaken doors. Witchlights glowed from sconces hanging over many of the doorways, creating pools of flickering light amid a twisting path of abyssal shadow. The hooves of the dark steeds struck sparks from the grey cobblestones and sent up a thunderous clatter that reverberated from the close-set walls.
All druchii cities were treacherous, labyrinthine places, full of blind alleys and confusing turns designed to entrap and kill the unwary, but Naggarond was unlike any living city Malus had ever seen. Once inside the walls there were no landmarks to navigate by; nearly every street ended at a crossroads that connected to three other narrow lanes, all leading off in unpredictable directions. None of the buildings he saw bore signs or sigils that told what they were, and if there were market squares anywhere he never saw them. Within minutes he was utterly lost, and he knew full well they had only just entered the outer wards of the city.
They rode for more than an hour through the labyrinth, alone but for the echoes of their passage. Malus saw not a single living thing along the way: no citizens or city guards, no d
runkards or thieves, penny oracles or cutthroats. It reminded him of nothing more than the houses of the dead, that city of crypts in the east where the ancient dead of Nagarythe were bound fearfully in vaults of stone.
There were three more defensive walls that subdivided the city, closed by three more heavy gates of iron. Tall, silent houses pressed hard against either side of these inner walls; as the first of the six cities, Malus had the sense that it had grown in fits and starts as the kingdom prospered, expanding beyond its own walls again and again until it was ringed like an old, gnarled tree.
Thus, when they paused before a fourth wall of gleaming stone it took several long moments before Malus’ exhausted mind registered the narrow, arched gate and the gatehouse formed of blades of forged iron.
Witchlights shone from the oculars of iron dragons that rose to either side of the formidable gate, their spread wings formed of hammered iron plates as sharp-edged as swords. Beyond the gatehouse rose a profusion of close-set towers like a thicket of polished spear-blades, pierced by slitted windows that glowed with sorcerous fire. Tendrils of vapour rose from behind the walls of the iron fortress, rising among the towers and reaching for the twin moons with claw-like fingers.
They had come at last to the Fortress of Iron, citadel of the undying Witch King.
Chapter Six
THE WITCH KING
A rattling boom reverberated from the iron gatehouse, startling Malus from his exhausted stupor, and the arched gate swung inward on ancient, dwarf-wrought hinges. The highborn felt a chill race down his spine as the black gate swung open and he stared into the blackness beyond. He feared to tread any deeper into the Witch King’s domain, but he knew that he had to get at least a glimpse at the fortress grounds to allow the Idol of Kolkuth to get him inside. As the first of the riders nudged their dark steeds forward Malus reached back and loosened the flap on the bag where the idol was kept.