The Barrow

by Mark Smylie

  Hathaz-Ghúl, she thought. Corpse-eaters. And she wished that she was dead.

  A couple of the Ghúl reached out and grasped hold of the body of Malia, pulling it toward them and away from being directly over the hole in the earth. They huddled around her suspended body, sniffing at her flesh and her blood, and began to chew on her arms and face. Several more of the Ghúl began sniffing at the hanging body of Too Tall, and at Gilgwyr as well, but Gilgwyr made a warding sign in the air and waved his hand toward Erim and Wilhem Price as though inviting the Ghúl to have their pick. The corpse-eaters sniffed and tasted the air, and several slowly clambered toward Wilhem Price with agonizing slowness as he and Erim struggled to get away from them. Cold, clawing hands finally reached out to take hold of his legs, and they started pulling him away from Erim. She screamed in anger and frustration around the dagger clenched in her teeth, for she could not match their uncanny strength and she felt him being pulled from her grasp.

  One of the Ghúl opened its serrated teeth and bit down into the exposed calf of Wilhem’s leg and began to chew. Wilhem Price screamed and thrashed about but the Ghúl had a strong grip on him and there were more of them now. A second one leaned in and began eating his foot. He looked toward Erim with desperate eyes. Suddenly her mind flashed on Isham Wall back at the tree, what seemed like ages ago but couldn’t have been more than a few days, and her heart sank and she knew what to do.

  She reached up, pulled the dagger from her teeth and plunged it into Wilhem’s neck. His eyes went wide and glassy with surprise as blood jetted out from the puncture through-and-through.

  Erim yanked the dagger out and the spray increased, and she turned and pulled herself out of the entrance hole, sobbing and cursing, as the sounds of feeding rose behind her and Gilgwyr laughed in delight.

  The three-biered antechamber beyond the tunneled hole was lit by lanterns and torches. Annwyn’s robe was on the floor. The nude woman herself crouched tightly over the body on the center bier in a lewd squat, whispering to herself. Leigh stood near her, admiring her naked form and the map images and words that played across her skin. She took a bracelet from the body on the bier and slid it on her wrist. “Oh, yes, you will make an excellent bride for Azharad,” Leigh said.

  Annwyn turned and looked at Erim with a strange smile on her face, watching as she crawled along the ground. “We have much in common, you and I. You yearn to be seen for who you are, to be yourself, and me, well I . . .” Annwyn said to her. “Well. I’m not myself, as our dear Stjepan likes to say.” Annwyn paused again and contemplated Erim for a moment, as Erim, sobbing, kept crawling for the exit. “He sees you, doesn’t he?” she asked with surprising earnestness. “But he doesn’t see me. Not yet.”

  “They haven’t eaten for a long time. They’ll be very slow,” Leigh called out to Erim. “You might even make it.”

  Annwyn and Leigh watched as Erim began clawing the dirt even harder, pulling herself into the passageway out of the chamber. Leigh started to laugh in delight at her predicament.

  “King in Heaven! Sss . . . Stjepan . . . Stjepan . . . Help me . . . Stjepan . . .” Erim started to cry out, her voice rising into the corridor and becoming a scream. “Help me!”

  The clang of hammers working steel punches against iron bolts rang through the room. Arduin stood perched at the lip of the hole, half turned to the entrance but looking down at the labor below him, where they had half the bolts freed. Suddenly he went tense and turned his head quickly, looking toward the entrance archway with a frown.

  “Quiet!” he hissed.

  Down in the pit, Stjepan, Godewyn, and Caider Ross stopped their hammering and froze in crouches, looking up at him in surprise, and the room fell into a long silence.

  Finally Godewyn stirred. “What? What?” he hissed in a loud whisper.

  “Did you hear something?” Arduin called down to them.

  Stjepan and Godewyn glanced at their tools, then up at Arduin.

  “You really think we can hear anything over all this hammering?” asked Godewyn, incredulous.

  Arduin relaxed and turned back to them. “Sorry, I thought I heard something,” he said with a shrug. And the men in the pit went back to work.

  Erim pulled herself along, crawling through the dirt. Behind her there was silence. Ahead of her she could hear the rhythmic clang of metal-on-metal, clearer now than before. Her tears had dried up, there was nothing left in her to come out. There was virtually no light, but up ahead she could see the lantern that she had set down in the passageway before being attacked, and beyond it something glimmering on the ground. Soon she reached the lamp and she stopped, using the light to quickly check her wounds. The self-inflicted wound on her left leg was still bleeding and the leg was rapidly becoming numb, so she cut off a sleeve from her shirt and used it to tie around the wound. She grimaced, and slipped off the rest of her shirt, and tied it tight about her waist to try and cover the entrance and exit of the through-and-through stab wound into her belly.

  Behind her, back from where she had come, she started to hear a faint scratching in the hallway that sounded like nails slowly moving along the floor or the wall. She ignored it, and turned and concentrated on the glimmers along the ground beyond the lamp, her rapier and dagger lying where she must have dropped them after being stabbed. She started crawling again, grabbing her rapier with her right hand as she passed it.

  As she crawled across the threshold into the first chamber of the inner barrow, she could hear the clanging sound much more clearly coming from the archway to the north, where she would find Stjepan and Arduin and the rest of them.

  She didn’t hesitate. She turned to the east and started crawling up the mosaic stone passage leading to the entrance chamber to the barrow and the exit beyond.

  Stjepan and Godewyn stepped back, tossing aside their hammers, as Caider Ross knocked out the final bolt. They circled the upright casket and Caider exchanged his hammer for a crowbar. He slid it into a slight space that had opened up between two of the protruding nuts. They all exchanged wary glances and then prepared to pull the casket lid forward and off.

  They started to put some muscle into the effort, and there was a crack as the iron lid unsealed from the standing base of the casket. As they started to ease the lid forward, a wave of stench hit them from inside the iron casket and they began coughing and retching.

  “King of Heaven!” Godewyn gasped, and he and Caider Ross leapt back, covering their mouths and noses with their hands; Stjepan struggled to hold the iron casket lid up by himself, but he couldn’t, it was too heavy and the stench compelled him to stumble back, and as the lid spun and fell onto the side of the pit, front side up, a wall of dead maggots coated in black filth cascaded out of the open casket, filling the bottom of the pit and splashing up onto the men in the pit as they leapt back.

  “Careful! What in the world—” Arduin started to ask, but he trailed off and grimaced as the smell reached him.

  Inside the casket stood a headless corpse, dressed in decaying finery, its hands clasped as if in prayer. Long robe, fringed collar, jeweled chain of office around its neck; everything in the casket was coated in a lustrous black filth, like unrefined oil, and dead maggots were embedded in the muck.

  Godewyn, Caider Ross, and Stjepan stood still, their boots ankle-deep in dead maggots, staring at the inside of the casket with fear and anticipation as the stench dissipated. They each held a shovel or a crowbar or a mattock now, snatched up from the ground and readied as though they were weapons.

  “It’s him, isn’t it? It’s him. It’s Azharad,” said Godewyn in a whisper.

  “It’s him,” Stjepan replied grimly.

  Godewyn grimaced. “Where’s his fucking head?” he asked.

  Arduin called down from the lip of the pit. “Where’s the sword?”

  The men in the pit moved forward, gingerly stepping on the dead worms beneath them, and looked closer.

  There was no sword upon the body, or in the casket, that they could
see.

  “Shit,” said Stjepan.

  Erim pulled herself out of the passage to the inner barrow, pain and effort and determination on her face. She began pulling herself up the stone floor of the passageway out.

  Stjepan warily inspected the insides of the casket, poking about with the adze edge of his mattock. Godewyn, and Caider Ross pressed in behind him and looked over his shoulders, craning their necks.

  “It’s . . . it’s not here! It’s just a headless body,” Stjepan finally called out. “That’s all that’s in the casket.”

  Arduin gaped down at him, incredulous. “What? Is . . . is it really Azharad?” he asked.

  “Yes. Yes, it must be,” Stjepan said. He put a gloved hand to his head, staring at the insides of the casket.

  “Of course it’s him, you idiot!” shouted Godewyn. “But where’s the fucking sword? What in the Six Hells are we doing here? We lost how many men for this? I do not fucking believe this horseshit!” Godewyn continued to rant and rave, pacing back and forth in the black muck at the base of the pit and filling the air with foul curses, his face turning beet red. Caider started to slowly back away from Godewyn.

  “I don’t understand. What’s going on? Why is there no sword here?” Arduin called out, trying to be heard above Godewyn’s shouting.

  “I don’t know . . . unless there’s more to the map,” Stjepan said. Annwyn. She wanted to get in here. Why? Why did she have to be in here? he wondered to himself. He looked up. “Lord Arduin, we must go back to camp and find your sister.”

  Stjepan stood and started to climb out of the pit, but behind him Godewyn’s ranting had reached a fever pitch. “. . . and that’s the last time I listen to some witch-born Athairi bastard!” Godewyn shouted. And he grabbed up his shovel and swung the flat of its blade into the back of Stjepan’s head, and Stjepan spun around almost completely and went down with a thud, coming to a stop with his head against the lid of the casket where it rested on the sloped earth of the side of the pit.

  Arduin stared impassively down at them.

  Panting, Godewyn stood smugly behind Stjepan’s unconscious body, while Caider Ross, his crowbar held like a weapon, looked up at Arduin.

  “I really do think that’s quite enough from you,” said Arduin quietly.

  Godewyn turned and looked up at Arduin, holding his shovel out like a pointer. “To the Six Hells with you. To the Six Hells with all of this. To the Six Hells with the fucking sword,” he hissed. He tossed the shovel aside and spat. “There’s a fortune in that other room, and we’re gonna go get it. Then me and my boys are leaving, with or without the rest of you sorry lot.” He turned to Caider Ross. “Here, go get me some of that rope.”

  Caider Ross climbed out of the pit on the opposite side from where Arduin stood and rummaged in some of the satchels and bags they had brought with them. He found a coiled-up rope and tossed it down to Godewyn in the pit, then shrugged a shirt on and started buckling his sword belt around his waist. Arduin watched with a tilted head and blank expression as Godewyn turned the unconscious Stjepan over and started tying his hands behind his back.

  When he was finished he flipped Stjepan onto his back again, and patted his face with mock affection. “Shit, Athairi, what’d you say about being buried when you were dead?” Godewyn said with a snicker. He climbed out of the pit, grabbing up his sword and daggers and his brigandine jack.

  He looked down at Stjepan in the pit, and then at Arduin. “It’s been a fucking disaster knowing you two,” he said.

  Godewyn and Caider Ross walked past Arduin and out the high-domed chamber.

  Arduin silently watched them go and stared at the empty archway for a moment. He looked back down at Stjepan’s prostrate form and gave an apologetic shrug.

  “I really must go find my sister,” he said.

  He turned and walked out of the chamber.

  Stjepan awoke to find that he was lying upon a carved stone bench in a clearing on a wooded hilltop. The forest nearby was filled with broad high trees of birch and purple-leaf oak, maple and elm, cherry and white ash, cedar and pine stretching out for leagues in all directions, their trunks coated with old layers of lichens and moss. Leaves were falling to pile on the perimeter of the clearing, or floating past him, stirred in the light wind. Storm clouds roiled the skies above, but he heard no thunder and felt no rain. He felt sure that it was late autumn, but rather than the riot of fall colors, of burnt red and orange-yellow and fire and gold, instead the landscape around him was but shades of blue and grey and black, as though the world was caught in a moment of perpetual dusk. A dream, then. He stirred and sat up, and looked around. He was looking to the east, that he was certain; the desolate high mountains of the Djar Éduins were visible through the trees to his left. Below him he could see a great stone castle that sat on a rise over a small riverside city, and he knew that across that river would be the Plain of Stones.

  No, this is not your home, this is not An-Athair. And no, you are not dead. This is not Limbo, either, came an ancient, gravelly voice from behind him.

  Stjepan turned and looked over his shoulder. He could see a figure standing in the shadows of the trees, wearing a long, black robe with a collar of tufted horse hair, surrounding the head like a black fan, and a long, pointed bronze mask, with a pair of gazelle horns spiraling up from its forehead. The mask’s eyeholes had an evil, slanted cast to them, and opened onto blackness. Ornate circular patterns swirled and wove their way along the edges of the mask and were echoed in gold thread patterns embroidered into the figure’s robe. A chain of gold and bronze discs inlaid with silver symbols was slipped over the collar and around its neck, almost like a noble’s chain of office.

  ’Tis but a dream, while you are in a place where men should not dream. Dreaming is for temples, not for graves. Not for my grave, the figure said.

  Stjepan stood up, alarmed.

  Arduin stepped into the first chamber of the inner barrow; he paused, uncertain. For a moment he looked toward the south passage, and then east out toward the exit. He swayed suddenly, and had to put a hand against the wall to steady himself. He almost retched onto the ground. My family is ruined, he thought. Our line is ended. There shall be no redemption for us here. And I have lost every knight of my household on this useless quest. Unless . . . unless . . .

  He took a deep breath, and then he turned to his right, and west toward the shrine of Ishraha and the treasure chamber with the bier and body.

  Stjepan stepped warily into the center of the clearing. He kept his body turned toward Azharad, who began circling the clearing, never entirely leaving the shadows of the trees. He tried not to let the ghostly figure out of his sight.

  “What do you want with me?” asked Stjepan.

  Azharad laughed with a hiss. What do I want with you? My barrow has at long last been opened, and I smell it in the air: metal and blood, leather and rust, sweat and fear. I hear it on the wind: the clash of arms and iron, the murmur of rumor and riot.

  As he spoke, the trees began to fade away and the shadows turned to men roiling in armored combat. And they were no longer in a clearing in An-Athair, instead they were standing in the midst of a dark and chaotic battlefield that moved about them in slow motion, as though the combatants were trapped in honey becoming amber. Stjepan looked but he could not see who was fighting; the armored warriors that whirled about them were hazy, indistinct, shadows and blurs.

  Wolves are howling, ravens taking wing, spirits of death and fire stirring beyond the veil! War is coming, and oh, how I would love to be back in the world for this! Azharad said as he walked amongst the fighting men. To feast on the bones and flesh of the dead! To sate myself on the bodies of those I have corrupted! Oh, to be free again to feed on the world!

  Stjepan’s eyes were narrowing.

  Oh, what I want with you is obvious, I think, said the ghost. No, the question is: what do you want with me?

  The light of several lamps illumined the long chamber of rough-hewn stone wa
lls and its low, corbel-arched ceiling and the deep arched crevices set in its sides. Godewyn and Caider Ross were quickly and quietly sorting through the urns and chests that lined the crevices and the perimeter of the floor, stuffing sacks with gold statues and figurines and anything that sparkled with gems, creating a pile of sacks by the door. Godewyn had slipped his brigandine back on, though he had not had the time to tie it properly and it hung open in the front, exposing the hair on his chest. They looked up as Arduin entered the chamber, his bared war sword still carried in the crook of his coulter, and both of them stood and drew their weapons, Godewyn with a broadsword in one hand and an axe in the other.

  “This is all that’s left of value and it’s ours by our rightful contract, this is, not yours!” Godewyn snarled.

  Arduin stared at him a moment, his face a blank, before he turned away. “Keep it,” he finally said. “Keep it all. I care not for those trinkets.” His gaze fell upon the long waist-high bier of rock and stone in the center of the chamber, and the beautiful sword clasped beneath the hands of the body that rested upon it.

  Godewyn followed his eyes, and snorted. “Here to claim a cursed sword?” he asked.

  “Who says it’s cursed?” Arduin said with a shrug. “I mean, how do we really know? Master Stjepan has been wrong about so many other things, so why not this as well?”

  Slowly Godewyn and Caider Ross turned and looked at the sword.

  Azharad continued to circle Stjepan, creeping closer and closer as he walked. What can I offer you? A chance to be a king, rather than a servant? the ghost hissed and gloated. I see the oaths that bind you!

  Azharad pointed and a ghostlike rune appeared on Stjepan’s bare chest. Ghostly chains seemed to bind the rune to his heart. A dagger was suddenly in Stjepan’s right hand.