by Andy Hoare
Suddenly, the roar of falling masonry was behind him and the ground beneath his feet was almost stable. Shaking off the grip on his arm, Khargrim stopped, bent double and took a great gulp of air before wiping his sleeve across his face to clear his eyes of the dust that had all but blinded him. The instant he did so he was almost blinded again, but this time by the blazing light streaming into his eyes
‘What by the ancestors…’ Khargrim mouthed, his vision coming into focus in time to see a lithe figure silhouetted against a jagged line of white light ahead and above him. Another tremor rumbled through the earth and the sound of hundreds of small stones pattering down a slope came to his ears. Then the sight snapped into sharp focus and Khargrim realised with a shock what must have happened. The figure was Karra Lakota, and she was crouched before a huge opening into a far larger space.
Yngv’s magical attack, far from blocking the side passage, had inadvertently blasted it wide open. So much power had clearly been channelled that the passage had not just been widened, but extended, and so far that Yngv had created a short cut from the subterranean avenue the party had been fleeing along and out into a vast, brightly lit space. His head aching from the residue of arcane power still seething through the air, Khargrim stumbled forward and was soon scrambling up the sloped pile of rubble towards the massive fissure and the Amazon girl waiting at its summit.
Coming to stand beside Karra, Khargrim found himself looking out into a vast basin, its upper half open to the sky. The bottom of the basin was a mass of churned earth and its walls were ragged with twisted, freshly exposed roots. At the basin’s rim hung a confused mass of jungle foliage, massive trees and vines spilling over the edge. The sky above seethed and arced with arcane power, as it so often did above the Lustrian jungles. It was clear however that Yngv’s spell had disturbed the normal balance of power boiling through the skies, for great vortexes of magic spun crazily overhead.
‘Valaya’s teeth,’ Khargrim cursed as he took in the sheer scope of the destruction that Yngv’s spell had wrought upon the earth. The crater was oblong in shape and must have been a mile long. Half way along its length the waters of a rapidly flowing jungle stream spilled over the rim to scatter into a fine spray in the air, its course evidently split by the devastation. Despite his awe at the sight before him, Khargrim got a grip on himself and turned toward the Amazon at his side.
‘Do you know the way out, girl?’ he asked.
‘I think we’re a mile or so due south of the Obsidian Altar,’ Karra replied. ‘If we can scale these walls, we should be able to make it back to the river. Unless…’
‘Unless?’ Khargrim pressed as Ghurni and several others of the party appeared at the pair’s backs. ‘Spit it out, girl.’
‘Unless the sentinels that guard the Obsidian Altar discover us,’ said Karra, her expression dark as she scanned the rim of the crater uncertainly.
‘I do not think I want to know,’ said Khargrim, turning to take stock of the remainder of the expedition. Every one of them, apart from Verdandi, was a ragged mess, their clothes cut and torn and covered in dust and their faces bruised and cut. The sea-maiden, as ever, appeared nonchalantly untouched by the devastation around her, though Khargrim could see from the vaguely haunted expression in her eyes that she was deeply disturbed by the things she had witnessed over the last few hours.
‘Is everyone ready?’ Khargrim addressed his companions as he prepared to move out before the lizardmen discovered them.
‘Aye, lad,’ Ghurni said encouragingly. ‘We are ready.’
‘Skarl’s dead,’ one of the thralls muttered. ‘And Erik, and Keld…’
‘Good,’ said Khargrim, shrugging his shield onto his back as he turned towards the open crater floor. ‘Let us get moving then.’
The crack through which Khargrim’s party emerged was half way up the side of the crater, but the walls nearby presented no obvious means of climbing to the rim. Instead of attempting an immediate ascent, Khargrim determined to descend into the newly riven valley and seek a better route, and to do so quickly, before any vengeful lizardmen could discover them, or indeed blame them for the damage to their realm.
The path down to the crater floor was made possible by a steep ramp of rubble and debris leading from the tunnel mouth, and Khargrim himself led the descent. The only thing that slowed the descent was the need to aid Thorkell, who was still shaking off the effects of so many glancing strikes by skink weapons which, Karra advised, were coated with a variety of jungle poisons. It was fortunate indeed that as a Bjornling Thorkell was well used to imbibing all manner of toxins and as such he was eventually able to shake off the worst effects.
Even with Thorkell affected by the skinks’ poison, the going was relatively good for the rubble was made of huge, flat boulders and after half an hour or so the party reached the raw floor of the crater. There, the full extent of the devastation was revealed to them. The ground was strewn with cut blocks that could only have been the remains of the outlying reaches of the Tomb of Destiny as well as a large stretch of the subterranean avenue along which the party had been travelling. How many long millennia those blocks had sat so far beneath the ground none could say, and now they were reduced to little more than scattered rubble. Fragments of broken lizardman symbols adorned some of the scattered blocks, and Khargrim was struck by the notion that a great blasphemy had inadvertently been performed here. Swallowing hard, he pressed on across the crater floor, leading the party as he sought a route up the towering walls to the jungles beyond.
‘Everyone keep an eye out,’ Khargrim ordered as he advanced across the rough ground. ‘For a way up, and for more lizardmen.’
‘What if we can’t get out?’ said Ovar, his eyes wide as they scanned the sheer crater sides. ‘We’ll starve...’
‘I consider starving the least of our worries,’ Khargrim replied, drawing a look of horror from the hunter.
‘Perhaps Yngv could summon forth some more food,’ Khargrim said distractedly. He had far more pressing concerns.
‘I really do not think that would be advisable, engineer,’ said Verdandi from further back along the line of marching adventurers.
Khargrim almost dismissed the sea-maiden’s statement, but something in her tone made him halt, causing a grumbling Ghurni to almost stumble into him as he turned. ‘Explain,’ he said flatly.
‘Yngv is lucky to be alive after tapping into the lizardmen’s web of power the way he did back there. In fact, I believe we are all lucky to be alive. If he tries to manipulate the winds of magic in any way at all he could bring about something even worse still.’
‘Damn it,’ Khargrim cursed. ‘I have seen him summon a magical bridge and walk across it before now. You’re telling me he can’t do that here, even to escape this trap we are in?’
‘Absolutely not,’ the sea-maiden replied in a sharp hiss, casting a glance towards the shaman. Yngv was stumbling along using his staff for support. Though he was muttering feverishly he was evidently fatigued almost to the point of collapse and Khargrim had no choice but to agree with Verdandi. ‘We must find a conventional route out of here,’ she said.
Trudging onwards once more, Khargrim scanned the lip of the crater for any sign of a path upwards. The air ahead was a silvered mist, made hazy by the newly created waterfall, but even through it Khargrim caught traces of movement.
‘Do you see something?’ said Ghurni, following his gaze.
‘I think I do,’ Khargrim replied, his eyes narrowing as he focused on a mass of tangled vines and roots spilling down the crater wall from a jumble of tumbled rocks high overhead. The vines had moved, probably stirred by the jungle breeze, and that had caught his eye.
‘Looks like a way out,’ Khargrim announced, picking up the pace. A round of approval went around the party, even Thorkell visibly brightening now it looked like escape was possible. ‘Karra, can you lead the way up those vines?’
But the Amazon didn’t appear to be listening. Instead, she had s
topped and was staring intently at the broken rocky outcrop that reared over the mass of vines. Her brow creasing so that it twisted her war paint into the semblance of some evil beast, she raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun.
‘What is it?’ Khargrim said, his heart sinking once more.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied distractedly. ‘I thought I saw movement…’
‘So did I,’ said the engineer. ‘The wind stirred the vines.’
‘Not amongst the vines. Above them. The ruin at the crater edge.’
Verdandi stepped up beside Karra, her gaze following the Amazon’s.
‘What was it?’ Verdandi said to Karra. ‘Before it was ruined.’
‘It is hard to be certain, with the landscape so changed. But I believe it was a… I don’t know your word for it. A place where…’
‘What is your word for it?’ Verdandi pressed, not taking her eyes from the ruin.
‘We call it an irahx,’ said Karra.
‘An aerie?’ said Verdandi.
‘It’s where the terradons roost…’ said Karra uncertainly.
‘The what?’ Ghurni interjected, just as Khargrim saw the vines stir once more. This time, there was no jungle breeze to account for the movement.
‘Karra,’ said Khargrim, gripping the Amazon’s arm with one hand while pointing towards the movement with the other. ‘That’s one of these… terradons, isn’t it?’
The girl simply nodded, then looked down at Khargrim with horror-filled eyes. A dark shape detached itself from the lip of the crater, followed moments later by several more.
‘We need to run,’ the Amazon croaked. ‘Right now.’
Khargrim spun about, searching wildly for any scrap of cover. Though the crater floor was covered in boulders, not one of them was large enough to shelter the party from the dark shapes speeding towards them. Then, he saw the only way to escape whatever these airborne beasts were.
‘Everybody listen!’ Khargrim shouted. ‘When I give the word, run for those vines and climb as fast as you can, got it?’
Though Ghurni nodded his understanding, the rest of the party looked back at Khargrim as if he were mad. The shapes resolved into at least three wide-winged beasts, flying lizards with what looked like skink riders on their backs. The terradons banked, shrieking as they fixed their beady eyes upon the choice morsels below, then started what could only be an attack dive.
‘Run!’ Khargrim bellowed as he pointed towards the base of the vines from which the terradons had launched themselves. ‘That way. Go!’
In an instant, the majority of the party was speeding for the vine-choked crater wall, but two had held back. One was Ghurni, the Slayer bracing himself with his axe held ready, and the other was Verdandi, who was squinting down the shaft of an arrow as her target screamed down towards her.
‘Get moving, engineer,’ said Verdandi calmly.
‘You get moving!’ Khargrim replied coldly.
‘I plan to,’ Verdandi said with a slight grin. ‘Once I’ve put them off…’
With that, she loosed her Graeling sea bow, the arrow flashing upwards like a lightning bolt to bury itself seconds later in the left eye of the lead terradon. The effect was instantaneous, the creature opening its pointed snout wide and screaming with deafening shrillness. Its wings beat suddenly out of time and its entire body twisted into a writhing mass of claws and leathery wings. The dive became a plummet, and seconds later the beast crashed into the crater floor a mere dozen yards ahead of Verdandi, impacting with a sickening, bone-jarring crunch.
‘Now,’ Verdandi said calmly, ‘is when I was planning on running.’
A second later the silver-haired sea-maiden was dashing past, leaving Khargrim alone in the open with Ghurni still standing, braced to face the remaining terradons.
‘Come on, Ghurni!’ he shouted, hauling on the Slayer’s elbow as he watched the rest of the party nearing the crater wall. Ghurni stood resolutely, determined he would not be moved.
‘I made the oath,’ said Ghurni as the shadow the terradon cast as it blotted out the sun passed over them.
‘Well I didn’t!’ Khargrim spat, a shouted warning from one of his other companions catching his ear.
Khargrim hauled on Ghurni’s elbow with all of his strength, and the two went down in a struggling mass the very instant an arrow flashed by overhead. Khargrim never saw the arrow strike the second terradon but he certainly heard the shriek that told him it had hit. But unlike the first terradon Verdandi had brought down, this one appeared to be carrying something in its huge claws, a massive chunk of the rock of its own aerie, which it had been attempting to drop upon the two the instant Verdandi’s arrow had struck. Its crude aim spoiled, the massive chunk of masonry hurtled from the air to strike the ground a mere dozen yards away. But instead of shattering, the stone rebounded with bone-crunching force, passing directly over the two prone dwarfs with a rush of air as loud as any cannonball before burying itself in the distant crater wall.
‘Grungni’s oath!’ Ghurni breathed. ‘If I had been standing–’
‘You would have lost your empty Slayer’s head,’ Khargrim finished for his friend as another silhouette bore down from the sky. ‘I shall not tell you again… run!’
This time, Ghurni did as he was ordered, and the two dwarfs ran as fast as their legs would carry them across the boulder-strewn crater floor, the shadow of the third terradon pursuing them all the way. Verdandi unleashed a third shot from her mighty sea bow, which missed the beast itself but struck one of the skinks riding upon its back. Though the shot did not slay the terradon it caused a moment of distraction as the second rider fought to regain control of the shrieking flying lizard, and a second later the two were at the base of the wall. Verdandi was waiting for them having climbed the first few yards of the vines as the rest of the party scrambled upwards.
The rest of Khargrim’s companions were already climbing the vines, which spilled down the crater wall in such a chaotic fashion that hand and foot holds were plenty. Ovar was already half way up, the hunter proving himself especially nimble. Behind Ovar scrambled one of the thralls, a Sarl warrior with shaggy blond hair and a helmet capped with mighty horns. The man appeared to have overtaken Karra, the Amazon scowling at him as he climbed ever higher towards the hunter. Lower down, Thorkell was dragging the still feverishly rambling shaman inexorably upwards. Only as Khargrim and Ghurni started to climb did Verdandi start upwards herself, stopping a few yards up to fire off another arrow at the last terradon, which banked and wheeled as its rider sought to find a way of attacking the party.
Khargrim gritted his teeth as he hauled himself ever higher, swearing colourfully every yard of the way, for this was far from the natural habitat for a dwarf. Verdandi and Karra made climbing look easy, the Amazon native to the twisted, dense jungles of Lustria and the sea-maiden well capable of the most acrobatic manoeuvres amongst the rigging of the far-ranging Norse vessels. Even as he climbed, Khargrim heard the shrieking terradon get closer with each pass, its mighty leathern wings beating the air into a violent storm as its pointed, serrated beak snapped and stabbed each time it soared through the air nearby.
Khargrim was almost half way up the wall and his limbs were screaming with pain when Karra shouted a sudden warning from much higher up. Cursing violently, Khargrim glanced urgently over his shoulder, only to see the terradon swooping in towards him, its skink rider drawing back its javelin in readiness to propel it towards him.
Entirely without thinking, Khargrim grabbed his hammer from his belt and hurled it wildly at the screaming enemy, pronouncing the word of command that would invoke its runic power. As the hammer sped through the air one of the runes etched into its head burned into white-hot life and the weapon struck the skink rider square in the chest, unleashing a blinding flash of arcane illumination that burned itself into Khargrim’s retinas for long moments.
The terradon’s rider vanished in the mystical explosion, its constituent elements scattered to ashes
, and the hammer arced back through the air towards Khargrim’s outstretched hand, guided and sustained by the most potent of runes. Khargrim caught the weapon instinctively as a chorus of triumphant shouts sounded from his companions higher up.
But, even as his eyes cleared of the retinal burn inflicted by the arcane detonation Khargrim saw that while the terradon’s rider was no longer a threat, the beast itself most certainly still was. The terradon was clearly maddened by the explosion and the loss of its master, its loathsome cries so loud they almost shook Khargrim from his perch even though he was now holding on to the vines with every ounce of his strength.
Throwing all caution to the wind, the terradon swooped in for the kill, risking entangling its wings in amongst the mass of vines, its tiny, predatory eyes fixed solidly on him. Khargrim knew with dreadful certainty that he was its sole target. With both hands gripping the vines just to hold on there was no way he could cast his potent rune hammer a second time.
As the beast closed it opened its serrated jaw wide, sweeping its mighty wings downward to give it some stability and lift. Its head darted forward and its teeth snapped together with a sound like steel blades clashing in combat. Khargrim twisted his body and lifted his legs a fraction of a second before they would have been bitten clean off.
He kicked out wildly as the beast swept past, unable to maintain its lift for more than a few seconds. Moments later it was sweeping down and away from the crater wall, though Khargrim could swear that one of its gleaming black eyes was still focused on him.
Aware that he didn’t have long before the creature returned for another pass, Khargrim struggled up onto a larger branch of vine and ensured that he was securely nestled in amongst the writhing tendrils before he craned his neck to look up towards his companions.
A brief glance told Khargrim that Karra and Ovar were very nearly at the summit and that the blond-haired Sarl thrall who had shoved his way past the Amazon girl was even now pulling himself over the lip. Verdandi was attempting to draw a bead on the terradon with her recurved sea bow, but her aim was being spoiled by another of the thralls, who was trying to pull himself up the very same twisted branch she was perched in.