A heavy halberd blade slammed into his stomach, but its edge was dulled and all it did was drive the wind from him. He doubled up, but before the halberd could be reversed, Marius thrust his sword into the groin of its wielder. The dead champion clattered to the ground as it was destroyed, and Marius surged to his feet, invigorated at yet another brush with death.
“It’ll take more than that to kill me!” he yelled, plunging headlong into the mass of dead warriors. The fear was gone, and he felt utterly disconnected from even the idea of it. He heard the booming wing beats of the dragon beyond the walls, but even that held no fear for him. For one wild moment, Marius thought of charging through the gateway to face the dragon like the heroes of legend who were said to fight such monsters on a daily basis. Common sense reasserted itself as he saw Aldred and a detachment of Raven Helms fighting the dead forcing their way down the western stretch of the walls.
The Endals fared rather less well than the Jutones, and Aldred’s warriors were falling to the black blades of the dead like cabin boys before a bosun’s whip.
“Ten of you with me, the rest of you secure this gate!” he shouted. “Nothing gets in or out!”
Without waiting to see if his order was obeyed, Marius ran towards the Endals. Pipe music drifted across the ramparts and Marius wanted to laugh with derision. Who in their right mind played music when there was a battle to be fought? His sword shimmered with light as he sliced it across the small of a dead warrior’s back, almost cutting him in two. His lancers swung their swords and maces to break a path through towards the Endals.
Marius blocked a slashing blow to the head and hacked the legs from another dead man, spinning around to parry two quick thrusts and destroy another pair of dead champions. These warriors might be the best of the dead, but Marius was a count of the Empire and bore a blade that hated the undead with a vengeance. Its power flowed through his veins like an elixir, and though Marius was a fine swordsman, even he wasn’t arrogant enough to believe he was this good.
Another blade of power flickered near him and he saw Aldred fighting against a towering monster of bone and iron. Like a vast statue of basalt, iron and discarded butcher meat, the monster slashed ponderously with an axe formed from some enormous creature’s jagged-toothed jawbone.
Aldred darted in to slash his sword at the creature, and it turned its great axe upon him. The Endal count jumped back, giving Marius the chance to attack the creature, plunging his blade into its back. His blade flashed with angry light, as though encountering some force inimical to the enchantments worked into its metal.
Marius flinched as the blade stung him like a treacherous serpent, feeling his sudden euphoria and confidence evaporate in the face of this new beast. It turned to face him, its monstrous, bovine skull jammed with the fangs of a dozen different deadly creatures. It snapped at him, a jagged tooth catching the links of his mail shirt and tugging him off balance. The jawbone axe swung for him, but the blue fire of Aldred’s blade caught the dreadful weapon in its downswing and deflected it into the earth.
As the beast straggled to free its blade, Endal warriors and Jutone lancers surrounded it, stabbing with spears and halberds. Marius righted himself and ducked beneath its slashing axe, slicing his own weapon towards the creature’s belly. The sword scraped along the monstrously elongated thighbone, trailing sparks of orange fire until it bounced clear on the vast pelvis. Aldred attacked from the beast’s other side, hammering Ulfshard against the beast’s flank.
As mighty as the beast was, it could not resist the pressure of so many blades and portions of its form began to come apart under the relentless assault. Shards of bone and armour peeled loose from its body as Aldred and Marius clove their blades through its unnatural bulk. Fighting side by side, the counts of the Empire hacked the slow-moving creature down piece by piece.
Aldred was the one to deliver the deathblow, though Marius had seen the opening. Even in the midst of this desperate fight, he knew to leave the glory to the man whose city this was. As the creature tumbled back in a collapsing pile of rotted armour and mismatched bone, Marius heard a sudden clamour from the gateway as the defenders finally resealed the shattered portal. Wagons, debris, broken crates and rocks were rolled down the slope to block the entrance. It wasn’t pretty and likely wouldn’t hold out against another attack, but it would do for now.
Marius rotated his neck to work loose the stiff muscles and walked towards Aldred.
“Quite some fight,” he said with a laconic smile. “Damn thing almost had me there.”
Aldred nodded, too weary to answer, and Marius swept his sword out in an elaborate bow before the Endal count. He heard shouts of alarm, but before he could pinpoint the reason for them, he was barrelled to the ground as someone in heavy armour slammed into him.
Marius rolled, but a mailed fist cracked against his jaw and he saw stars. Shouts of alarm became shouts of anger, but Marius was too dazed to understand what was going on. He felt himself being dragged away from where he’d fallen and struggled to get his feet underneath him. He heard Jutone and Endal voices shouting at one another, but couldn’t make sense out of what they were saying.
Eventually his vision cleared enough to see that he was being dragged away by one of the Raven Helms, Aldred’s chief lieutenant if he remembered correctly, though the man’s name was a mystery. He rolled and swung his sword up. The man jumped back and Marius scrambled to his feet as Aldred ran over towards the confrontation.
“Laredus, what in Manann’s name are you doing?” shouted Aldred.
“Getting this conniving, murderous bastard away from you!” shouted the Raven Helm.
“Are you mad?” demanded Marius. “I was fighting alongside your precious count, you damned fool! I’ll have you flogged for this, a hundred lashes from my strongest lancer!”
“Enough, both of you!” cried Aldred. “Put up your weapons, there will be no flogging here. Laredus, I mean it, put up your sword.”
The Raven Helm stared at Marius with unbridled hatred, and Marius knew he saw through his deceptive facade of bonhomie and brotherhood. This man knew he intended to win the hearts and minds of the Endal warriors before engineering Aldred’s death. Laredus was a dangerous man, and Marius knew he would have to find a way to be rid of him before continuing with his and Marika’s plan to make Marburg their own.
Before any more could be said, a freezing shadow enveloped the ramparts as the mighty dragon and its sorcerous rider dropped from the sky to land upon the barbican towers with a thunderous boom of wings. Its hideous bulk shook the very foundations of the citadel as it reared over them with its jaws spread wide.
Despite his terror of this monster, Marius smiled as he realised the perfect means to be rid of Laredus had just presented itself to him in all its monstrous, draconic glory.
Assuming it didn’t kill him too…
* * *
“Can you hit it from here?” asked Govannon, squinting towards the blurred outline of the empty barrel resting against the walls of Reikdorf. He’d placed the canvas bag on the barrelhead, but couldn’t see it from here. Nor could he tell how far away it was, but Cuthwin assured him they were at least a hundred paces away. Bysen held onto his shoulder, eager to see if this composition would produce a more stable reaction.
Though Govannon’s sight was virtually gone, he still felt Cuthwin’s withering gaze.
“You could put it another fifty paces back and I’d still hit it,” the scout assured him.
“Sorry,” said Govannon.
“Is this one going to work, da?” said Bysen. “Is it going to be big bang?”
“Hopefully, son, but not too big.”
Govannon had spent weeks working on the dwarf war machine, melting down almost every spare piece of armour and weaponry to forge a strong enough tube to replace the broken barrel. In every case the required centre of mass was off, the metal perforated with air bubbles or the weight not a precise match. These had proven to be costly mistakes, for each
imperfection caused Master Holtwine’s wooden carriage to fall out of balance. Dwarf engineering was unforgiving of errors.
But now they had it, a perfect twin of the other barrels; one that was completely in balance with the others and which was free from air bubbles and matched the precise density of the dwarf work. Though he never said so out loud, Govannon wished he could travel to the mountain holds of the dwarfs to hear their cries of astonishment at his accomplishment.
Holtwine’s timber carriage was a work of beauty, an elegant recreation of the broken one that had been dug from the ground. Its flanks were embellished with carvings depicting Cuthwin’s rescue of Grindan Deeplock, and his battle with the wolves. The machine was locked in Govannon’s forge, but as magnificent as it was there was one problem.
Without fire powder, it was simply an expensive sculpture.
Govannon had forged plenty of shot for the machine, but he had no idea how to craft the dwarf folk’s fire powder, which the device needed to function. In desperation, he’d made Cuthwin read him passages from accounts stored in the Great Library of Empire tribesmen who’d seen these weapons at war in action. From these accounts, Govannon had worked out how the devices functioned, which was more than any man had done before, but knowing how a device worked and recreating it were two different things.
With Eoforth’s help, they had found a Jutone text purporting to be the writings of a trader named Erlich Voyst’s journey to the lands of a far-flung eastern empire beyond the Worlds Edge Mountains where the death of a great king was marked by great explosions fired into the sky by a fine black powder. Voyst had tried to discover the secret of this powder, but had been stymied by his host’s reluctance to divulge its composition. In the end, he had stolen a batch and tried to recreate it on the voyage home, though all he had managed to do was destroy three of his ships and lose a leg in the process.
It had been a painful process of illumination, for Cuthwin read slowly and Eoforth was too engrossed in his own researches to be much help. Throughout their researches, Govannon noticed that the venerable Grand Scholar took care to remain within sight of them at all times, as though afraid of being alone in his own library.
Armed with the many variations of Voyst’s recipe for eastern fire powder, they had tried numerous experimental proportions of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur, sometimes adding mercury and arsenic compounds for added effect. Most of their concoctions had burned too slowly, while others had blown smoking holes in the forge wall and begun fires that threatened to burn Reikdorf down. In the wake of such incidents, Alfgeir had threatened to shut down their work, but Govannon had, thus far, managed to persuade him of the validity of their researches.
“So are we far enough back, smith?” asked Cuthwin, breaking into Govannon’s thoughts.
“Yes,” he said. “We should be.”
“Should be?”
Govannon nodded. “Yes, I’m almost sure of it. This new concoction has an added resin extract to slow the explosive reaction. It should react with just the right amount of violence, but enough control to allow us to fire the war machine without blowing it to pieces.”
“Or us,” added Bysen. “We don’t want to be blown to pieces neither, do we, da?”
“No, son, we don’t,” Govannon assured him.
“Well, if you’re absolutely sure,” said Cuthwin.
“I’m sure. Light the arrow.”
Cuthwin lowered the oil soaked arrowhead into the flame and Govannon heard his bowstring pull taut.
“Best cover your ears after you loose,” said Govannon as the arrow flashed from Cuthwin’s bow. The burning shaft flew through the air and punched into the canvas bag. Almost instantaneously, a thunderous bang echoed from the walls and a fiery plume of orange light erupted from the bag. Acrid smoke coiled upwards, and a cloud of black streamed up from where the barrel had stood.
Cuthwin and Bysen led Govannon forward, his ears still ringing from the deafening blast. The barrel had vanished, leaving nothing but splinters the size of a child’s little finger. A portion of the city wall was blackened in a teardrop shaped pattern and a number of angry warriors shouted down at them from above.
“Sorry!” shouted Cuthwin, waving at them.
“Did it work, da?” asked Bysen, sifting through the remains of the barrel and turning the smouldering fragments over in his hands.
“In a manner of speaking,” said Govannon, able to make out the extent of the black scorch marks on the wall despite his blurred vision. “Even with the addition of the resin, the explosion was still too powerful. It would destroy the war machine.”
Though this concoction had failed to produce a workable compound, Govannon took out his measuring sticks and began to plot the dimensions of the blast. He shouted numbers for Cuthwin to note down, running through fresh ideas on how to retard the speed and violence of the reaction.
As Govannon measured the extent of the blast, a troop of horsemen rounded the curve of the wall. Even before he heard the lead rider’s booming voice, Govannon knew who it would be. He braced himself for the Marshal of the Reik’s ire.
“Damn you, smith! What in the name of Ulric’s blood are you doing? I warned you about testing that fire powder!” shouted Alfgeir, dismounting from his horse and marching over to Govannon. He could smell the sweat and anger of the man coming off him in waves.
“Ah, Alfgeir,” said Govannon. “Yes, you did warn me, I remember it vividly.”
“Then why are you trying to destroy the city walls with your damn foolishness?”
“You said you didn’t want me to burn down the city,” pointed out Govannon. “So here we are outside it. The wall may have suffered some slight damage, it’s true, but nothing that should affect its structural integrity.”
“Some slight damage?” snapped Alfgeir, kicking over a pile of blackened timber. “You damn near put a hole in it.”
“Scientific discovery requires some… experimentation and trial and error methodology.”
Alfgeir paced along the length of the wall, staring at them all one by one, struggling to hold his anger in check. Govannon wanted to remind him of what they might learn from this experiment, but knew the man needed to vent before he would listen to reason.
“Damn me, but if our advancement requires the work of a blind man, a simpleton and a huntsman, then we’re doomed for sure,” said Alfgeir. “And aren’t you supposed to be making me a sword? Didn’t I commission the finest blade in the land, and didn’t you promise that it would be ready by the first snows?”
“It’s not snowing yet,” said Govannon, looking towards the sky. “It’s not is it?”
“Not yet, but it will be a week at most, and I still haven’t seen any hint of a blade.”
“You’ll have your sword, Marshal of the Empire,” promised Govannon. “And, if I’m any judge, something far more impressive.”
“What are you talking about?” said Alfgeir, kneeling beside the shattered pieces of timber, and Govannon heard the warrior’s sudden pique of interest at the idea the weapon might actually function. “Did it work?”
“No,” said Govannon wearily. “It didn’t, but we’re close.”
“Close isn’t good enough, Govannon,” said Alfgeir. “Either get it working in the next few days or I’m loading it on a wagon and sending it east to the dwarfs. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” said Govannon.
* * *
The dragon roared, sweeping the ramparts with its deathly dry bellow. Marius tasted ash and caustic fumes, throwing himself flat as the hot breath billowed. As the heat washed over him, Marius realised these were not the corrosive fumes that stripped flesh from men’s bones, but simply a terrible exhalation of long dead lungs.
Cries of terror spread away from the dragon as warriors fled from the nightmarish creature. He rolled onto his side, gripping his sword tightly as though his terror could be kept at bay simply by holding a weapon touched by protective sorceries. Incredibly, it seemed as though tha
t were the case, as his terror diminished in the face of what was surely the most horrifying thing he had ever seen.
Its eyes were sunken, rotted orbs that burned with emerald fire. The rider astride its clattering bone neck loomed over them all, its mailed gauntlets crackling with dark energies that flowed into the dread mount and filled its dead limbs and corpse-flesh with animation. Reeking clouds of bloated, blood-fat insects swarmed around the monster, a haze of flesh-eating creatures ready to feast on the dragon’s leavings.
Beneath the rider’s hood, twin orbs of smouldering fire swept its gaze across the collection of mortals arranged before it, as though understanding that the masters of this city were within its grasp.
“Aldred!” shouted Laredus, running towards the count of the Endals. “Get back!”
Marius felt the eyes of the black-robed sorcerer boring into him, a hollow gaze of utter evil, but his sword hilt grew hot in his hands and he felt the power of the creature swirl around him without effect.
He smiled, flexing his fingers on the copper-wound handle of his sword as the feeling of invulnerability surged through him once again. The dragon lurched forward, not sinuously, but with an awkward gait that was at odds with the grace it showed in the air. Marius was reminded of a fish scooped from the water onto a river-bank, or the wide-winged birds that lived on the cliffs above Jutonsryk—poised in the air, but waddling and graceless on the ground.
Its claws slashed out at waist height and half a dozen of the Raven Helms were smashed to bloody ruin. Its skeletal head snapped down and plucked another from the ground. The man screamed, but his cries were cut off as the dragon bit down and snapped him in two. Laredus fought to get Aldred back, but to his credit, the count of Marburg stood his ground. Ulfshard blazed with fey light that reflected from the tarnished scales that still hung from the dragon’s bones.
Lancers and Raven Helms stabbed long pikes at the dragon, but the blades scraped down the beast’s hide or bounced from iron-hard bone. Dozens surrounded it, hurling spears and jabbing its body with halberds. Marius worked his way around the edge of the fight, staying close enough to play a part, but keeping clear of the vast monster’s slashing claws and snapping teeth.
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