by Andy Remic
Skalg nodded, and twisted a little, seeking comfort.
“It still pains you?” Irlax smiled then, a warm and friendly smile. “I could recommend you to my personal surgeon. He trained in Vagandrak, at Vagan University, and is skilled beyond the comprehension of most of our people.”
“No, no, that’s quite all right,” said Skalg. Because how long would my life expectancy be under the scalpel of your most loyal physicians? How many minutes? Less than I would care to wager!
Irlax waved his hand, then rubbed it down his beard. “Anyway. Enough of this kind of talk. I have several other matters I need to discuss. Shall we retire to the library? I have some fine port that needs attention, and there we can discuss the current shortage of slaves in the Great Mine. I believe we are going to send teams out again, scouting; our shortage of criminals of our own kind is getting quite disconcerting. It’s almost as if,” he laughed quietly, “word of church cruelty has spread. Almost is if people fear the church more than serious crime itself!”
Skalg nodded, and scowled a little when he realised his presence was going to be required at the Palace of Iron a lot longer than he had first anticipated.
“It would be my pleasure, Your Highness.”
Four hours later, and with his hunched back screaming at him in pain – damn, I did not bring a honey-leaf infusion! – Skalg limped down the steps and climbed wearily into his carriage. Fires burned along the roadside as his carriage trundled from the gates, and dwarves bustled along both sides of the busy thoroughfare, going about their everyday business. As usual his Educators drew wary glances, but Skalg was in no mood for such minor enjoyment. He drew the curtains, leaving himself in a comfortable, maudlin gloom.
That bastard Irlax is going to have a few surprises in store over the coming days, weeks and months; this, I promise, thought Skalg sourly as they progressed, wheels rattling, his Educators alert. He thinks he can tell me what to do, tell me how to run the Church of Hate! He thinks to order me, the First Cardinal, because in his feeble dwarf mind he is at the top of the food chain! Well, he is not.
Skalg leant forward, back screaming fire, and put his chin on his fist, grunting in pain. He felt the sway of the carriage, and then the tilt as they started down the steep descent of Smith Street, and the donkeys strained backwards, taking the weight of the carriage against their harnesses. Skalg heard the hiss of the brakes.
One day, somebody will teach Irlax a lesson.
One day, somebody will remove him from the throne.
And on that day, the Church of Hate will be the only power in Zvolga – indeed, for the whole of Harborym Dwarves!
The carriage laboured down the steep hill, iron-rimmed wheels rattling on cobbles.
A shout sounded outside, and Skalg, ever-cautious, flicked one of the curtains. A swarthy dwarf on the pavement was pointing back up the hill, and shouting. Others turned, and more shouting rang out. Several female dwarves screamed, and a panic rippled through the crowd on the pavement.
A cold chill gripped Skalg’s chest. He shifted in his seat, slapping open the rear curtain to stare up the curve of the sloping cobbled road. His mouth dropped open, eyes growing wide.
Thundering towards his carriage was a huge barrel, rolling on its side, the whole thing roaring with flames. Reflected orange danced from the slick dark walls of the buildings lining Smith Street, and dwarves were leaping out of the barrel’s path with shouts and growls of anger and fear. A noise came to Skalg, a thundering, pounding, roaring sound. The donkeys could smell fire now, and became suddenly skittish, pulling against one another. Skalg banged on the window, but his Educators were staring in horror at the speeding, flaming barrel.
It’s going to hit, thought Skalg as fear coursed through him. It’s going to fucking hit!
He looked behind again; a dwarf was ploughed under the barrel, which barely shifted as it crushed him, such was its weight. And realisation struck Skalg like a helve blow and left him reeling.
Assassination…
He reached for the door’s handle, but the donkeys bolted, dragging the carriage with them. The door swung wide and noise rushed in, shouts and the ominous thundering sound. Skalg could smell fire and smoke, and fresh dung from the panicked donkeys. The door banged against the gloss of the carriage bodywork, denting the fine lines. Suddenly, the donkeys veered left, but too sharply, and the carriage turned, one wheel cracking with a sound like snapping bone. The carriage tilted onto its side and, in a shower of sparks, slid down the cobbles, grinding, the momentum and weight dragging the donkeys over onto their backs, legs kicking, strangled by their own harnesses as they were now pulled over, and down, kicking and screaming over the cobbles. Skalg was tossed about inside the carriage, and just as it came to a rest, the barrel struck, driving the carriage further down the slope of Smith Street, snapping the wheels and grinding at the undercarriage. Inside the compartment, Skalg cowered back as the floor buckled in towards him, and flames roared and screamed, and he grabbed hold of the cracked and bending seat as they were slammed down the road once more. The donkeys were screaming, kicking feebly with broken legs. Dwarves were shouting. The world seemed suddenly black and filled with smoke and sparks.
Please let it end. Oh no. Will it ever end? Will it ever end?
Skalg cowered, choking on smoke, eyes streaming, the roar of flames in his ears. Then came a long, low grinding sound, louder than a tunnel collapse in the mines, and Skalg’s hands – laced with cuts from the smashed glass of the carriage’s windows – covered his ears, his face contorted with a mixture of terror but also rage; rage at this attack, rage at this assassination attempt.
I will show them!
I will not die in such an ignoble manner!
The grinding increased, the barrel no doubt rotating against the buckled underside of the carriage. Stars exploded in Skalg’s mind as his skull bounced from a bulkhead. His thoughts were spinning. He vomited onto what was now the floor, but was the broken frame of the carriage’s side body.
Slowly, slowly, the carriage eventually ground to a halt.
The flames continued to roar, and with horror Skalg realised the carriage was burning. He reached up, grasping the door above him. His fingers were sliced by shards of broken glass. He shoved, but the door was firmly wedged shut in a buckled frame.
“Help!” he cried, from this burning womb. “Help me! It’s…” he had a fit of coughing, “it’s Cardinal Skalg! Your cardinal is trapped in here! Somebody help! Help your cardinal! The church needs him!” Those fucking useless Educators, I’ll see them lose the skin off their backs for this! he thought.
Skalg’s boots clattered on splinters of seat, and he managed to poke his head through the hole where the window had been, careful lest some stray splinter of glass gouge out his eyes.
The world beneath the mountain seemed to have descended into chaos. Further up the slope of Smith Street, three more flaming barrels were rumbling on an accelerating trajectory. Flames roared and smoke billowed. Several buildings lining the street were in flames. Dwarves were running around like ants in a pile of sugar, in seemingly random paths, to Skalg’s eyes. The barrel which had taken out his carriage had shifted to one side but was still burning merrily – as was the majority of his carriage. Within a few seconds, he would be on fire.
Through smoke, he managed to locate his Educators… and his mouth fell open for a second time, for they were fighting a battle with axes and clubs against a large force of stocky dwarves – a force advancing on Skalg and his burning carriage. Even as he watched, Blagger went down under the strike of a club, and three dwarves laid in with boots, rendering his face and head a smashed-in pulp.
Only Razor looked calm and collected, dancing amongst the attackers, a short blade in each hand, cutting throats and stabbing groins.
“Help!” cried Skalg, weakly. His hands shook the door in its frame, and his eyes swivelled frantically.
Will I fit? Will I fucking fit? He strained to pull himself out of the window slo
t. Glass cut into his upper arms and chest, making him squeal. But he would not fit. His hunched back, source of many a curse, made him too bulky to squeeze free.
“Damn you!” he screamed, frothing at the mouth. “Damn you all to The Furnace!”
“I find that unlikely,” came a cool voice, and Skalg looked up into a face that filled him with terror. He knew that face, for it was the assassin, Echo, wanted by the Church of Hate and the monarchy for endless crimes of murder against the Harborym Dwarves.
There was a click, and Echo dragged open the carriage door, reaching down and hauling Skalg from the burning carcass. He threw Skalg, who hit the cobbles hard, like a sack of compact horse shit, and lay very still as pain lanced through him; through his crippled spine, through his tangled limbs, through his battered skull. Blood-filled stars spun in his eyes. This is the end, his mind reasoned calmly.
Echo leapt smoothly from the carriage, which continued to burn. The sounds of clashing sounds rang out through the streets. Others were arriving now, City Guards, King’s Guards, Church Wardens. All came with their particular brand of robes and weapons and helmets. With the many fires, the street was now a thriving chaos through which various factions fought. But on this side of the burning carriage, it was cool, and dark, and safe for a few moments. Populated by only two people.
Skalg. And his would-be assassin, Echo.
Skalg rolled, twisting with his hump, and managed to get on his hands and knees. He began crawling across the cobbles.
“Where are you going?” laughed Echo, and leapt past the cardinal, drawing a short black knife and allowing firelight from the burning carriage to dance along the dulled blade.
Skalg, who’d rolled over and was resting back on his elbows, dirt-smeared, smoke-stained, blood-spattered, with his robes torn and in disarray, looked up at Echo – a face from distant nightmares – and gave a narrow grimace.
“Don’t kill me,” he said. “I have money. I have influence! I have it all at my fingertips…”
Echo leered down at him, and grinned. “Your money won’t help you now, you murdering crippled bastard,” he said, as his knuckles tightened on the blade.
Journey
THEY RODE NORTH.
Beetrax formed the point of the wedge, as he always had in the past, as he always would in the future. It was a pride thing, it was a warrior thing, it was a man thing; nobody objected. It kept him from moaning.
Second came Dake and Jonti, at ease atop their mounts; Lillith came next, at the centre of the party, the safest place – in theory – for one who abhorred violence of any kind. To the rear came Talon, the most talented archer in Vagandrak, alongside Sakora, who preferred silence to talk and thus made her a questionable companion for Talon, who liked to regularly verbally express the concept of his own physical perfection.
Over the next few days they skirted the Rokroth Marshes, unwilling to get dragged into the misty, stinking realm; many better men and women had died in that unloved place. Beetrax knew the paths, as did they all, for they were Vagandrak ex-military and the army liked to train its soldiers hard.
They rode over undulating grasslands, littered with huge rocks, and saw the towers of the abandoned Skell Fortress in the distance to the west. They had the same old conversations, of war, and horror, and the ghosts of old soldiers; or hauntings and evil and how some abandoned places were abandoned for a reason.
A flurry of snow caught them in the open, but they pushed on through sad grey days, knowing the journey had to be like this, because the Ice Bridges of Sakaroth would allow access during only a short window, and without this crossing their mission, their adventure, their exploration, their treasure hunt, would stall in the water before it had even begun.
As their horses picked their own, gentle route through the rolling grasslands, Beetrax looked over the distant towers and battlements of Skell Fortress. He gave a deep sigh, and rolled his neck, the cracking sounds of released tension making Talon groan.
“I hate it when you do that, Axeman.”
“I hate it when you take noblemen to your bed.”
“Oh, we’re on that old topic again, are we?”
Beetrax leaned back in his saddle. “I thought it was your favourite?”
“Beetrax, men can love men, just as women can love women.”
“Well, it ain’t right.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, sex, like. It’s for a purpose.”
“Go on.”
“It’s to make babies, ain’t it?”
Talon chuckled, both hands on his saddle pommel, his face broad and beautiful and filled with good humour. “Axeman, if that’s the only reason you fuck, then not only are you doing it wrong, you have some serious mental issues.”
Beetrax flushed a little red. He scratched his beard. “Well, we – enjoy the company of a lady – to make babies. Surely? That’s our… biological purpose. A man’s legend lives on through his children. That’s his immortality, that is.”
“And what about women?” said Lillith.
“Eh?”
“What about a woman’s immortality?”
“Do women even seek immortality?”
“Of course not! You are right. We simply exist to sit at the feet of our heroic men, gazing up with wide, adoring eyes, clutching feebly at their well-muscled legs, and thanking our lucky stars we managed to find such a perfect specimen of masculinity.”
Beetrax frowned. “Well, I’ve never met a woman who wanted immortality.”
“You’ve been keeping the wrong company then.”
“Horse shit!”
“Tell me the last time you had a meaningful conversation with a woman.”
Beetrax thought about it. “This one?” he said.
“Ha!” Lillith smiled, and pushed back her heavy locks. “You should come to the library more often, Beetrax. You have an amazing body, but your mind is… shackled. I will help you expand your mind. I will help unlock the inner you.”
They rode on for a little longer. A few flurries of snow snapped at them, like annoying dogs. The wind howled through a forest to the east, low and mournful, a fresh widow’s lament. The ground was peppered white, rocks cast with frost. The sky was a huge wide pale blue bastard, streaked with serrated daggers of ice cloud. The horses stamped occasionally, smoke snorting from nostrils, iron shoes striking hidden rocks with cold sparks.
Beetrax dropped back, slowing his mount, to ride beside Talon.
“You hear that, lad?”
“What’s that?”
“Lillith made comments about shackling me.”
“I thought she meant your mind was locked down, and she would help you unshackle your prejudice; to make you mentally free?”
“Er. Is that what she said?”
“Look, Beetrax, the world is changing. People are changing. You’re stuck in an outmoded place. Why don’t you let me educate you?”
“I don’t need no education from you, lad. I was on those battlements whilst you were still suckling milk from your mother’s tits!”
“Beetrax. I fought on the same battlements, remember? That mud-orc was going to skewer you on a spear, and I put an arrow through its mouth. The point popped out the top of its head on a shower of brains, and we laughed about it in the mess afterwards.”
Beetrax stared at him. Then he glanced off, towards Skell.
“I feel, sometimes, that I am older than the world. I feel, sometimes,” he eyed Talon thoughtfully, “that everybody in the world is mad, and I am the only sane person who walks between them. I spend my nights in the tavern, and people want to fight me, or joke with me, or fuck me – usually just after I’ve beaten somebody senseless. I’m confused with the world, Talon. I feel like I don’t fit in. I feel like…” he struggled for words, “I feel like people are strange. Or, I acknowledge, that maybe I am strange. Maybe I’m the insane one.” He lapsed into a brooding silence.
Talon smiled easily, and reached over, patting Beetrax’s leg. Beetrax stared
at his hand, with its long fingers and perfectly manicured nails. “Axeman. You know what your problem is?”
“Go on.”
“You need to relax.”
“You see! You see! That comment makes me want to take out my axe and split your fucking skull in two like a ripe melon. Why do you do it? Why do you and all those other fucking bastards goad me into violence all the time?”
Talon sighed. “I believe,” he said, “that there are breeds of men. Just like you have breeds of dog.”
Beetrax stared at him. “You’re not making this better, you know?”
“Hear me out. Some men are yappers, little annoying whelps who nip at your ankles until you give them a good solid kick. Some are born fighters – like yourself – who raise their hackles at the first affront and won’t back down until they’re both bloody and battered and wishing the fight had finished an hour ago.”
Beetrax frowned. “So which one are you, lad?”
Talon grinned. “I’m the intelligent one at the back, watching the idiots fight and deciding on rich pickings afterwards.”
“Hmm,” said Beetrax. “I will think on what you said.”
“Good! Good!”
“Although you made an error of judgement with your choice of mongrel.”
“I did? How’s that?”
“Because you’re the pampered fluffy poodle, sat in the middle thinking it’s top fucking dog, when in reality you are the one soon to be… supper.” Beetrax grinned, showing his broken tooth. “And you don’t ever want to be supper, lad.”
They made camp within a circle of huge, house-sized boulders.
It was snowing, and Dake had eventually got a fire going. Talon had been out, brought down a stray deer with a single shot. Beetrax skinned and gutted the beast, and Dake set large flat stones over the fire, greased with fat scraped from the hide. He was frying venison steaks and the smell had filled the circle, amidst the flickering orange light, making it feel homely, warm, friendly. Beetrax pulled out a bottle of brandy.