by Chris Sharp
“Slud punched hole t’rough de skull fer ya,” the troll rasped. His voice was still a croaked whisper, but the gash across his throat had already healed to a neat line since they’d dug him up.
Fixelcrick delicately slipped the syringe into his satchel before taking the offered head. Next the troll draped a coiled rope over his shoulder. “Dat’s a good knot. Just loop it ’round de chimney ’n’ down ya go.”
Agnes dumped Neither-Nor’s newly acquired body parts onto the table beside the rest, and gave them a close sniff. She handed the bag over without looking, and Fixelcrick dropped the dummy head in.
Fixelcrick got the impression that saying no to Slud would be just as bad an idea as it was with Agnes, but he seemed reasonable enough, someone Fixelcrick could work with. “I’ll do it, but when it’s done, and the Khan’s dead—I want me coat back.”
Agnes gave no indication of having heard him, but the troll answered. “Sure t’ing.”
“And I want the Elixir of Undeath too. I wanna know how it’s made.”
Agnes hissed and spun toward him with one of her hooked talons raised to strike, but Slud stopped her with an outstretched arm and motioned her to the door. “Done . . . Slud’s buildin’ a gang. If ya do dis ’n’ live, ya got a spot, goblin.” The troll spat into his giant palm and held it out for Fixelcrick to take.
He spat into his own palm and let his hand be enveloped in the giant’s painfully firm grip. Slud held on after the shake and lowered his tusked maw close. His breath stank like a rotting corpse. “Don’t get caught, boy. ’N’ if ya do, keep yer mout’ shut, or Slud’ll etch ya live same way as dat body.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Fixelcrick was crouched on the roof of the clan herbologist with the bloody bag at his belt and his far-seeing eye trained on the smoke hole in the roof of the great hall. The fallen tree was crawling with guards now, and this was the only other high place he could think of with a decent vantage of the inner stockade. The hex doktors had cultivated their herbs on the growing platforms across this roof for years, and it was not uncommon for them to harvest the mugwort, holly leaves, and periwinkle on a cold winter night.
He could hear the riders and wolves milling about the courtyard: coughs and foot stamps, then a snarled dispute over sleeping space among the beasts. It ended with a whip and a whimper. He’d have to fly high and get lucky for none of them to see his approach. With the flying cloak, maybe, but he’d never been good at controlling elemental spirits before the banishing of the salamanders that morning. Nothing about this was a good idea.
Fixelcrick took the syringe from the satchel and stared at the quarter vial of black liquid within. If the night-hag’s memories of suffering were any indication, she’d been present among the wars of the old gods. She was maybe even one of them, hiding among the mortals for millennia, resurrected from the flames again and again. She alone knew the recipe for immortality.
Fixelcrick knew if he slipped, she’d take both his life and spirit in an instant, but access to her knowledge was worth the risk; and despite what Bone Master had taught him, something about Slud made him want to follow. There was a vibration in the undead troll’s bones that resonated deeper than the world around him. No position in any clan could compare to what they offered.
All that matters is the Knack, he reminded himself before jamming the syringe through his breastplate with a sharp exhale. He thumbed the plunger. The initial jolt knocked him back against the railing with a clatter. His body went rigid, and he fell to his side for the convulsions that followed. His face pressed into a tray of snow-covered soil as the eyes of the guards on the tree passed over. It felt like he was burning from the inside out. He tasted blood as he bit the meat of his palm to stifle a scream. This was different than the pain he’d felt through the shared memories with the hag—closer and more visceral, like he was losing control of his form and not just his mind. The witch had tricked him.
It was too much; he couldn’t fight it. He gave in to the agony. The scream escaped, but no sound emerged from his stretched mouth. His blood rocketed through his veins, and he would have clawed out his own throat to release the pressure if he could have moved. Against such suffering, death would have been a gift.
Only then, as quickly as it had come, the spasm ceased and the searing heat abated into a warm throb. He could hear Black Agnes’s hissed laughter inside his head. It was his laugh now, and his will was no longer his own to govern.
Fixelcrick stood and raised his palms to the sky as the words Agnes had taught him spilled out of his mouth. “Ig’na’a thoch zu-ghul.” The stinging wind howled down the mountain and whistled through the branches of the trees. The guards who might have witnessed shut their eyes, pulled blankets around them, and hunkered low, but the cold didn’t bother Fixelcrick as it had. Unseen hands took hold of his legs and arms, raising him up into the air as his gaze locked on the stubby chimney of the great hall. Without words, he willed the aerial servants forward, and they carried him across the stockade toward the pitched roof.
He glanced down at the thick host of wolves and warriors below, none of them looking up to see his passage as the bad wind whipped snow and pine needles into a frenzy. He stifled a laugh, his or Agnes’s he did not know, and planted his feet on the overlapping planks of the roof as the servants of the wind released him. The night was brighter than it had ever been. The shadows held no fear, and the hidden world that lurked below the surface, which he’d spent his lifetime slaving to grasp, was now his to play with.
Surely, this was what it meant to be immortal. With the witch’s blood in his veins, he could do anything. Why waste me time retrievin’ heads, when Fixelcrick can be one of the great warlocks of the age?
A lash of torment shot through him in answer. He smacked his chin on the stone lip of the chimney before grabbing the arch of the roof to save himself from tumbling down to the courtyard. Agnes’s laugh echoed in his mind.
The rope came off his shoulder as he regained his feet. He looped it around the stone vent without another moment’s hesitation. The thick ceiling of dark clouds visible through the trees was getting lighter; he didn’t have long. He peered through the square opening and smelled smoke; he could see little through the darkness but the orange glow of embers in the fire pit far below. He eased the rope over the edge, lowering it down slowly until its full length was through the opening.
It would have been too small for some goblins, but Fixelcrick had never had broad shoulders or been counted on for his brawn. His hands white-knuckled the rope, and he swung his legs into the smoky oblivion. With his breath held, he descended, hand under hand down the short tube of soot-black rocks until the vast hall opened up beneath him on all sides. He dangled and spun as his newly awakened eyes adjusted.
With the flames dying and the torches snuffed out, the space was vast, dark, and cold. He could hear the echoing of snores from both ends of the hall and see the shapes of goblins beneath thick layers of blankets around the fire pit directly below. He lowered himself farther, only able to hold on because of the borrowed strength in the witch’s blood.
The throne was empty, but Fixelcrick could see the two wolves resting on furs piled beside the door at the rear of the hall that led to the Khan’s personal quarters. Rousing them would be the end of him. Then he heard a gentle slapping sound below and smelled burning. He looked down to see the butt of the rope dragging along the coals in the fire pit. The rope was too long; the fibers were smoldering, and then a little flame burst to life.
The sound of his inhale echoed off the ceiling. He glanced at the wolves—not moving—then back to the jolly flame as it climbed the rope toward him. This ain’t possible! Could still climb back up and live!
Agnes’s psychic lash snapped across his mind, and he lost hold of the rope. His hands scrabbled desperately as his legs wrapped tightly around the cord. His fingers caught it again at the expense of a bad rope burn just before Agnes’s command sounded in his thoughts: Fetch the head or feed the wolves.
Fixelcrick kept descending with an added swing, his far-seeing eye focused on the beam above the Khan’s throne. The rope was long enough that he didn’t need to work too hard to build his arc, but now the burning cherry at the tip was whipping out above the sleeping guards in one direction before swinging back toward the prone wolves in the other.
He kept swinging and reached out until his boots touched down on the flat of the rafter above the throne. With a little hop, he braced against the rope to regain his balance. Neither-Nor’s head was beside him, nailed through the skull to the wood and framed on both sides by the drape of slow-dried entrails. He glanced over his shoulder at the wolves one last time, but they still hadn’t stirred, though one of the sleeping goblins murmured and moved by the fire. Fixelcrick’s far-seeing eye snapped around to lock on the sheen of black feathers poking up from beneath the blankets. Me coat!
His hand drew the knife at his belt, and his weight shifted back to the rope, but Agnes’s presence reared up to stay the impulse. She loomed there in the back of his mind, reminding him that the next lash would send him tumbling to his death. He sheathed the blade and plucked the dummy head out of the bag at his hip instead.
Holding the rope in one hand and the head in the other, he crouched on the beam with a precarious sway. The replacement head was wedged into his lap as he reached down to try for a grip on Neither-Nor, but his fingers fumbled at the goblin’s waxy, hairless skin. The famous red cap slipped off and fell to the coagulated pool of blood below. Fixelcrick froze, listening for the slightest rustle to send him scrambling toward the ceiling, but it didn’t come.
His fingers reached down and tried again, finding a firm hold on the teeth of the goblin’s top jaw. Slowly, he pulled it away from the beam with the sound of skull scraping against the iron spike that pierced it. It caught on the crown of the nail, and he had to give it a jiggle until the head popped free. The final piece of Neither-Nor went in the bag, and Fixelcrick’s heart swelled with a small sense of victory. He yanked open the mouth of the dummy and gripped it the same way, but he stopped again as someone shuffled and yawned behind the throne.
No, no, no! He looked up; the sky was quickly brightening through the little square high above. Someone had stood and, by the sound of it, was getting dressed just a few feet away . . . Perhaps Fixelcrick could summon one of the salamanders from the embers, but he didn’t know the words. Maybe there was enough wind in the hall for the aerial elementals to answer, but they would wake the whole room in their bluster
He remained there, helpless and frozen as the old Big-Boss-of-the-scouts-turned-Herald, Harog, scuffed by the throne directly below him. The hairy goblin yawned again as he ambled past the pool of dried blood, and took a wide path around the sleeping killers beside the fire pit. He didn’t notice the fallen hat, the smoldering tip of the rope dangling above the throne, or the Chief Hex Doktor balanced awkwardly on the closest rafter. In a hurry, Fixelcrick lowered the dummy head and jammed it onto the spike through the pre-punched hole.
A hairy step from Harog later, and Fixelcrick was pushing himself up the rope with his hind legs working like one of the crickets’. He rose in a frantic rush, and the rope started to swing precariously while Agnes laughed in his mind. Just as the front doors of the great hall were opened, and the clatter of the new day awoke all within, Fixelcrick yanked the end of the burning rope over the lip of stone high above.
“Ig’na’a thoch zu-ghul.” Invisible hands carried him up to disappear among the shadowed branches of the clan tree.
HAROG HATED being called Hairy Herald. He’d always tried to be fair to the many goblins below him while keeping his distance from those above. The better a job he did at keeping watch and patrolling the borders, the less he had to interact with the Khan. It had been working well for years, and then that idiot goblin, Dingle, had ruined everything.
Harog waited as the exhausted guards unlocked the stockade door and slid the massive beam aside. Every wolf and goblin in the courtyard was red-eyed and shivering. A few looked like they might try to kill him out of spite as he shuffled through the creaking doors and turned toward Clan Center.
When he’d been Big Boss of the scouts, he’d never had to wake up early. He’d had his own comfortable bed to sleep in, and his own balcony for cooking meats as he looked out toward the clan tree. Technically, he supposed he still owned the house, but the Khan only let him leave the hall for brief errands, and the one time he tried to check in on his old life, Short-Fuse and Long-Pig had been sent to bring him back before long.
Harog was sure he’d be killed horribly on the first slow day the Khan found. He’d caught the wicked drunk eyeing him predatorily more times than he could count. No doubt the sadistic coward would have his killers string him up and shave him before his slow death.
His bum foot scraped through the dirty snow, and in a few steps the fur that trailed behind was soggy and black. He’d been told to fetch Fixelcrick; the Khan wanted to see him early. Arok usually liked to get the first kill in while he was eating his eggs, and Harog had overheard Short-Fuse poisoning the efforts of the new Chief Hex Doktor after he’d left the hall in a huff the day before. Harog had considered warning him, but what was the point? Without a flying coat there was no escape for any of them.
A goat and a chicken were walking down the middle of the road toward him. The chicken followed at the goat’s heels and clucked in a ceaseless one-sided conversation—unlikely friends brought together after the troll’s tree had shattered whatever world they’d known. They ignored Harog as he scuffed by.
Harog let the thick hair fall before his eyes. He normally trimmed it twice a day, but his scissors were at home, and there wasn’t much that happened in that hall that he wanted to see. His attention went only so far as his next step, until he noticed the deep line that was scraped in the muck leading into Clan Center. He brushed the hair aside and looked ahead. A tiny goblin wearing a hat that looked like a sock was dragging a large sword on the stones of the merchants’ circle. The sword was at least three times his height, and it scraped carelessly across the cobbles as the funny little goblin turned abruptly toward a house and knocked four times on the thick door.
It was the doktor’s house, the one always filled with the chirping of crickets, the one that Harog was looking for. Harog recognized the goblin who awaited entry as well, though he didn’t see how it was possible. It was Dingle, but Dingle was dead.
TWENTY-ONE: All Keyed Up
SLUD HAD HEARD the stories of the ancient Frost King Thrym when he was little. Aunt Agnes had told of the deeds of the Lord of the Jötnar as if she had been there herself, speaking of him with love and respect, and telling of his murder at the hands of the treacherous gods with lasting anger. Until very recently, Slud’s whole life had been framed by those epic tales of old, and he’d been led to believe that he would grow to perform feats as momentous as those of the once famous heroes of a forgotten time. The reality of such actions was far less romantic than he’d imagined.
His adversaries were not bold or worthy opponents, and they had only been made his enemies by a fight that he himself had picked and lost. Just as it had been in his little world locked in the valley of the Iron Wood, life outside was defined by pain, exhaustion, and the unending test to overcome the urge to give in. Greatness, legends, and the stories of a lost age were bullshit. Life was about will and luck, and the rare moments when the two coincided—the rest was just suffering, and the fleeting illusion that the suffering abated for a few stolen minutes here and there.
Slud was a puppet at the end of Agnes’s string, and the first great disappointment of his life was realizing that his efforts against the Rock Wolves were not in her honor, but at her continued command. He breathed his fresh understanding in through his nose and out through his mouth, never running away from the pain but joining with it, letting it wash over and become a part of him. He rolled his abused neck and swallowed with his newly fused throat—still buzzing and warm with
that last potion’s influence. Next, he arched his back and filled his lungs to capacity, relishing in the pinprick jabs that peppered his body where the crossbow bolts had been.
His eyes snapped wide as the door opened and Dingle slipped in with a sword dragging behind him. Agnes quickly slammed it shut and slid the beam into the cage before turning back to Neither-Nor’s headless body. The scarred goblin’s legs, arms, and torso had reconnected nicely, with the lines of runes still rearranging across his skin as the muscle and bone beneath knitted together. But Fixelcrick hadn’t returned yet, and with no head there wasn’t much hope for their plan.
Dingle dragged the sword across the hut toward Slud, sending crickets flying in every direction as he came. The tiny goblin presented the pilfered sword as best he could, almost knocking himself over in the process. “D-d-did Dingle do g-g-good, master?”
Slud took the blade in hand and gave it a shake. The balance was front heavy, the metal was cut-rate, and the blade was dull. “It’ll do.”
The little fellow smiled wide and dropped his forehead to the floor with an audible thunk, but his beady eyes and everyone else’s attention all swung back to the door when two loud knocks came from outside. They’d agreed on four slow knocks; it had been Fixelcrick’s idea . . .
“Dingle, I know you’re in there! It’s Harog . . . the Herald. Open up!”
Everyone froze except Slud, who stood with a grimace, sword in hand.
“Fixelcrick, I’m alone. The Khan sent me to fetch you! It’s not good, but if you don’t open up, Short-Fuse and Long-Pig will come back and it’ll get a lot worse,” Harog said.
Slud hunched and moved toward the door as the crickets leapt out of his way. Agnes gave him a nod and moved to unlock the cage and raise the brace. He shifted the sword to his other hand and flexed his fingers, sliding as close to the wall as possible. He gave Agnes a nod, and she swung the door open just as his hand shot out to grab the dangling fur of the Herald’s chin.