Runefang

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

  “They’re butchering my men,” Baldur complained. Rambrecht laughed incredulously at him.

  “What do you care?” Rambrecht scoffed. “Soon you’ll be commanding Averland guards, not this trash!” He dismissed Baldur’s complaints and concerns, watching avidly as the battle continued to unfold. The knights were alone, fighting back to back with nearly a dozen brigands surrounding them. Several more were converging on a hulking swordsman who was trying to carry a wounded man back into the rocks. The aristocrat laughed again. The fool should have let his friend lie; now they were both doomed. There was no way he could wield his greatsword with one arm supporting his friend.

  Rambrecht was not the only one who noted Kessler’s situation. As she was dragged through the carnage, Carlinda saw the swordsman’s travail. Despair surged up within her and she redoubled her struggle to pull away from her captors. The bandits growled at her, striking her and urging her forwards, but Carlinda barely attended their violence, her entire attention riveted on the killers closing upon Kessler and the baron. She knew he would never leave the baron, and she knew that he would die if he didn’t.

  Carlinda closed her eyes, a quiet litany rasping past her lips. She opened herself to the waves of power she had tried to block for so long, trying to focus it in her mind, trying to use it to help Kessler. The bandits holding her pulled away, releasing her as they recoiled in fright. Her skin grew icy, and her breath turned to mist as all the warmth drained away around her. She could feel the breath of Morr blowing all around her, coursing through her. She started to bind it to her will, to force the power to her purpose.

  The augur’s eyes snapped open in horror, honor that was echoed all around her. Bandits, knights and soldiers, all set up cries of alarm and terror. A great cloud of darkness was gathering, swirling in the empty air above the fray. Carlinda felt her soul shrivel as she beheld it, felt ancient fears rekindle inside her. In her desperation to help Kessler, she had gambled and tried to harness the breath of Morr for the first time since the ritual had been profaned by Zahaak’s sending. Now she knew that she had lost that gamble.

  The black cloud slowly began to resolve into a shape, the outline of a hooded skull. Eyes of fire gleamed in the sockets of the skull, glaring hungrily at Carlinda. Dimly, she heard the brigands’ fragile courage shatter, heard them scurrying like rats back into the depths of the forest. Dimly, she heard Kessler shouting her name. She dared to look away, dared to watch as he took a trembling step towards her, torn between his concern for her and his loyalty to the injured man he carried.

  She only managed to look at him for an instant, and then her eyes were drawn back to the sending. She could feel the infernal will of the monster that had sent it stabbing into her, fiery worms that seared into her brain and lashed her soul. She could feel the thing pawing at her mind, clawing away at her memories. She knew she could not let it find what it was looking for. She had to stop it, if it was not already too late.

  Carlinda struggled to look once again at Kessler. Briefly, so briefly, he had made her whole again, made her almost a woman once more. She hoped she had helped him, in her way. Now that was all over. There was only one more thing she could do to help Kessler, to help them all.

  She closed her eyes, willing the dreadful energies she had called upon, the energies Zahaak had used to find her and connect with her mind, to converge upon her own flickering life force. She felt her limbs grow leaden, and the icy numbness of the grave flowed through her. The heart in her breast faltered and grew still. The last thing she heard was Kessler shouting her name.

  Carlinda’s body crumpled to the ground like a broken marionette, her limbs already rigid, her flesh already grey and cold. The wispy skull hovering above her snarled as she died, seething with wrath. Then the sending reared back, seeming almost to laugh as some new thought came. The image of Zahaak was still exuding pitiless malevolence as it faded back into the nothingness from which it had come, only the cold, still body of the augur testifying that it had ever been there.

  Kessler stared at her, overcome with horror. He did not begin to understand what had happened, and knew that he didn’t want to. Carlinda was dead, and her death was a thing of blackest sorcery. He wanted to go to her, but fear held him back, terror of that ghastly shape that had formed above her and had laughed at her passing. He felt shame and guilt and all the other self-despising emotions a man can know, but none was strong enough to draw him closer to that bewitched corpse.

  Shuddering, Kessler turned his mind to helping the baron. Eugen and his surviving knight, a youth named Gerhard, came to help him build a litter for the stricken nobleman, while Skanir and a pair of surviving soldiers kept a watch on the trees against the return of the bandits.

  When the litter was built, the men hurried to pursue Ghrum and the wagon. Kessler could not deny that he shared in their eagerness to put the battlefield and Carlinda’s eerie death far behind them.

  As much as he hated himself for it, even he didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER NINE

  They didn’t stop running until the gloom of night forced them to stop. Some ran to outdistance any pursuit from the men who had ambushed them. A few, those who had seen the crone’s ghastly dissolution, were spurred on by something deeper, more primal.

  It was with no small measure of reluctance that Marshal Eugen called a stop to their retreat, lest their already reduced numbers be further savaged by blind wandering through the benighted forest. What strength they still had lay in their numbers, and they could ill-afford to have that strength scattered and lost in the wilds.

  Kessler was thankful for the pause. As soon as Eugen allowed them to stop, he was scrambling to the supply wagon. Ghrum had pulled the heavy wagon for hours, even the prodigious endurance of the ogre tested by such a feat. To lighten his burden, almost everything had been stripped from the wagon. All the remaining supplies had been abandoned save for a cask of water and a side of salted beef. The sides of the vehicle had been broken off, leaving only the flat bed behind. The wounded languished upon it, the ogre’s loping gait across the hard broken ground threatening to spill them from their tenuous refuge at every turn. When the constant bump and bounce of their passage opened their wounds afresh, Theodo did his best to minister to them. Often it was not enough, and the grim-faced halfling would motion to the soldiers marching stoically beside the wagon. These men would sombrely close upon the wagon, grabbing whatever poor soul Theodo indicated. The dead man would be deposited in the brush and the ogre’s burden would lighten just a little more.

  Throughout the long march, Kessler had watched the morbid spectacle with dread, waiting to see the broken body of his master dumped unceremoniously in the forest. Somehow, Baron Ernst von Rabwald managed to cling to life until the time when Eugen finally allowed them to rest. Kessler tried to force cheer and hope onto his gruesome face, but even without the horror of Carlinda’s death clouding his mind, he was a stranger to such moods and ill-fitted to suggest them to another. Ernst accepted his hand, holding it with a pathetic grip that spoke even more of the baron’s flagging vitality than did the pallor of his face.

  “I’ve done all I can,” Theodo apologised, climbing between the wounded to stand over the baron. “He needs a real healer, not a camp cook playing at surgeon.”

  Ernst tried to tighten his grip on Kessler’s arm, as though to refute Theodo’s words. He saw the way Kessler’s expression sagged at the feeble exertion. The baron leaned back, his breathing becoming shallow. “Who’s left?” he asked. The question troubled Kessler, for it was one he had asked every time the swordsman had approached near enough to the wagon to catch his eye.

  “Skanir, Eugen, one of his knights and three soldiers still fit enough to be called such.”

  The baron closed his eyes, nodding as he considered the grim report. After a time, he gave a weak, dismissive wave of his hand. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice struggling to rise above a croaking whisper. “All Wissenland depends upon us. We must en
dure. We must prevail!”

  Kessler looked around, almost embarrassed by Ernst’s desperate outburst. Every man was watching the wagon, their faces a mixture of defeat, guilt and pity. They did not need to be reminded how much had depended upon them. It was Eugen who emerged from their ranks to quietly reprove the baron’s feverish cries.

  “My lord, we are too few,” the knight said. “We must turn back, and let some other take up the task and succeed where we have failed.”

  Ernst turned eyes desperate with denial towards the knight. “We have to do it,” he insisted. “Us, no one else. There isn’t time for anyone else. Every day, every hour we tarry, that much longer does the enemy ravage our land! We must do it!”

  The knight sighed, his voice becoming soft, patronising, like that of a patient father trying to dissuade a child of some fantastical delusion. “My lord, we can’t. We have no horses, no supplies—”

  “Get them,” Ernst whispered. “Requisition whatever you need wherever it is found.” His bloodied fingers fumbled at the torn ruin of his once elegant tunic. A folded length of stained oilskin dropped away from his hand as it emerged. Theodo bent and recovered the parchment from the bed of the wagon. The halfling whistled appreciatively as he read the elaborate calligraphy on the page.

  “A letter of marque,” Theodo rasped, “bearing the count’s seal!” Almost reluctantly, he handed the parchment to Eugen. “He’s right. Carrying that, you can commandeer anything that isn’t nailed down, anywhere in Wissenland.”

  Eugen read the letter and then shook his head again. “Even with this, we are still lost,” he explained. “The witch is dead and without her we can’t find the crypt.”

  “Hrmph!” grunted Skanir. The dwarf was leaning on his hammer, trying to stuff the bowl of his pipe with a particularly pungent selection of crushed leaves. “I don’t need some manling sorceress to tell me how to find a dwarfish war-tomb!” He removed a small firebox from his belt and began to work the grinding mechanism to create an ember to light his pipe. “Or maybe you’ve forgotten why exactly your count wanted me to come along? If it was just to nursemaid you lot, I’d have stayed put with my cannons!”

  The dwarf’s surly remarks were seized by Ernst, a feverish light creeping into his eyes. “You’ll carry on?” he asked. “You’ll find the crypt and bring back the runefang?”

  Skanir drew a deep breath, expelling a plume of grey smoke from his nostrils. “I gave my word, and Skanir Durgrund is no umbaraki. Let faithless mongrels like Uthor Algrimson shave their beards and break their oaths.” The dwarf paused, inhaling another lungful of thick smoke. His beard and eyes glowing in the smouldering light of his pipe, Skanir turned his head and looked at each of the men surrounding the wagon. “I gave my word to your count, but I haven’t made any oaths at the Shrine of Grimnir. I won’t go rushing off to some lonely doom, my bones lost and forgotten. If the rest of you turn back, then I reckon my word has taken me as far as honour demands.”

  Ernst focused his attention back on Eugen. “You have to do it!” he pleaded. “Otherwise all is lost!”

  “No, your lordship,” Eugen replied, his voice heavy. “If we try, weakened and ill-equipped, with no chance of success, if we try and fail, then all is lost. Our own glory means nothing, the recovery of the runefang and Solland’s honour is what matters. If the gods have decreed that others should accomplish this, then who are we to question their will?”

  A spasm of pain contorted Ernst’s face and the wounded man sagged back against the hard planks of the wagon. “We can’t… You can’t go back. It has to be now! It has to be us! Zahaak will kill everything his legion touches!”

  “Then let it die,” Eugen said gravely, “if that is the will of the gods. We can’t selfishly cling to this chance to recover the Southern Sword. It is too important that the sword be found!”

  Ernst favoured the knight with a disgusted wave of his hand, dismissing Eugen from his presence. The baron turned his desperate, pleading eyes on Kessler, fixing the swordsman with his imploring gaze. “You must lead them Max,” he said. “Take them to the gates of hell if you have to, but don’t give up! Don’t abandon the people. Don’t prostitute hope to ambition! Take command, Max, and do a better job of things than I did!”

  It took some time for the baron’s words to eat away at Kessler’s sense of defeat, and longer still for him to convince the bloody-handed swordsman that he should take command of the ragged remains of their company. It was the last thing Ernst had the strength to attain, and once he had impressed his last, wretched hope upon Kessler, he settled back and lay still. Kessler stood by his side, waiting through the long hours of the night as the baron’s life slowly drained away.

  Sometime after midnight, he joined Eugen and the others around the tiny fire they had made.

  “He’s gone then?” Eugen asked as Kessler lowered himself to the ground. The swordsman replied with a sombre nod, and then focused a haunted gaze on the crackling flames.

  “A good man,” one of the soldiers said. “He should have had a noble death, something more heroic.”

  “Death is death,” Kessler said. “There’s nothing heroic about it. However it comes to you, you’re still just as dead.”

  “Cling to life with both hands to the last, eh?” Theodo laughed. The halfling was more than a bit deep in his cups and the others around the fire had long ago given up the fruitless effort of getting him to share whatever potent spirit was lurking within his hipflask. “Only way I’d prefer to cross the gate is grey-headed in a bed big enough to smother a dragon and with a brace of saucy…” The cook’s inebriated jocularity grated on Kessler’s already worn nerves. He rose and turned on Theodo. The halfling remained oblivious to the threat, but Ghrum was a good deal more aware. The ogre lurched up onto his feet, looming in the darkness like a small hillock. The men around the fire shuffled uneasily, almost unconsciously drawing away from Kessler.

  Kessler met the ogre’s menace with a stare of smouldering fury. Ghrum’s eyes retained an almost brutish level of tolerance as he met that stare. Beside him, Theodo continued to concoct increasingly unlikely and amoral qualifiers to what he would consider an agreeable demise. The ogre cracked one of his knuckles, the sound booming like the crash of a hammer against an anvil. Kessler took a step towards the looming monster. Ghrum’s face twitched with what might have been amused respect.

  There was no question which way the uneven contest would resolve itself. Even a big man like Max Kessler was hardly a challenge for an ogre. Before the mauling could begin, however, furtive, rustling sounds from beyond the camp arrested everyone’s attention. Even Theodo’s drunken posturing drifted into silence as the sense of menace impacted even his befuddled senses. Weapons emerged from scabbards as eyes strove to penetrate the dark. Eugen’s whispered orders passed around the fire and men began to separate, to assume a rough approximation of a skirmish line.

  The tension continued to mount as the sounds drew nearer. Theodo was fumbling with his bow, trying to remember how to nock an arrow to the string. Ghrum stood beside him, the ogre’s gigantic sword clenched in his boulder-sized fists. Eugen and Gerhard, the last of the Knights of the Southern Sword, fixed the centre of the line, imposing despite the absence of their heavy steel armour. The surviving soldiers held the ground to either side of the knights, nervous sweat dripping down their faces. Kessler unlimbered his zweihander and secured the left flank, placing himself close to the wagon and his dead master’s body.

  It was Skanir’s cry that broke the tension. His vision sharper than that of man or ogre, his eyes more accustomed to the dark of tunnel and cavern than the light of day, he was the first to recognise something familiar in the figure stealing towards them in the night. Even so, it was not until the man emerged into the dim circle of light provided by the fire and all could see for themselves the veracity of the dwarf’s claims that any within the camp felt obliged to lower their weapons.

  Bloodied, bedraggled, his armour torn, his clothes soiled by m
ud and briar, Sergeant Ottmar all but collapsed as he gained the camp. He seized the first waterskin he saw, draining its contents with ferocious greed. Then he sank gratefully beside the fire, trying to warm limbs numbed by the chill of the forest. Only when he had partially succeeded in this effort did he acknowledge the questions that bombarded him from every quarter.

  The wound Ottmar had received was ugly, but neither crippling nor life-threatening: a deep gash in his upper arm, delivered by a sword stroke that had been more zealous than accurate. Theodo was too out of sorts to tend the injury, so Ottmar was forced to endure a tightly bound compress until such time as the flesh could be properly stitched together.

  After they had sent Kessler back to warn the others, Ottmar and Ekdahl had tried to hold off the brigands. In this, their ambitions had exceeded their abilities and in short time they were nearly overrun. Both men had tried to lead the bandits off through the forest, thinking to mislead them from the real location of the column. However, when they heard the sounds of a terrible fight unfolding behind them, they knew they had failed in this purpose. They turned at that point, thinking to retrace their path and lend what support they could to Baron von Rabwald’s men, but they had been followed by a handful of bandits. These came upon them suddenly and without warning. Ottmar was brought down by a sword stroke, left for dead by his attackers. When he recovered from his injury, he was alone with no sign of either Ekdahl or the bandits.

  Ottmar had made his way back to the rocks, discovering the carnage left behind by the battle that had raged there. He saw the path the survivors had taken, Ghrum’s enormous prints convincing him it was his comrades and not the brigands who had departed that way. The rest of the day, he had struggled to follow after them, but his wound vexed him terribly and he had never quite been able to catch up. Indeed, he had almost despaired of ever achieving his objective until he saw the light of their fire beckoning to him in the night.