The Kormak Saga

by William King

  “Dig in,” said Brandon, perhaps a trace too heartily. He seemed to want to put the horrors of the night behind him. Sitting in this comfortable hall, the strangeness of the previous night might have happened in another lifetime. Kormak looked at Gena and she nodded permission. Kormak invoked the blessing of the Sun over his food and helped himself to bread and cheese.

  “It’s been a very long time since we first met, Sir Kormak,” said Gena. Kormak smiled.

  “We meet in better times,” he said. The first time they had met had been after the great battle of Aeanar when the orcish armies had been broken and Brand and the other Kings of Men had been celebrating the victory.

  “Do we?” she said. “Tell that to Olaf’s mother.”

  There was anger in her tone. Kormak glanced at her. The smile had vanished from her face but she was running her hand through the little boy’s hair. He understood at once what was troubling her. So did Brandon. The knight reached out and stroked his wife’s face. There was a tenderness in the gesture that Kormak envied.

  “Now, Gena, don’t fret. The tomb wight is gone. Kormak killed it.” There was a gasp from one of the children near the table. The little boy buried his head in his mother’s skirts again. It was not a childishly theatrical gesture this time. It was real fear. It could not be easy growing up in the shadow of the barrows of time-lost Kharon, Kormak thought. The name was a curse in the Northlands of Taurea. People still whispered the name of the Defiler here, when they spoke of him at all.

  “Did you really kill a wight?” the boy by the fire did not sound so bored now.

  “No,” said Kormak. “You cannot kill something already dead.”

  Brandon’s laughter boomed out. “Kormak was educated by priests, young Radney. He would argue the finer points of definition with you till the cows are brought back from milking.”

  “I was educated by the brethren of the Order of the Dawn,” said Kormak, keeping his tone mild. “And they taught me more than debating.” He tapped the hilt of his sword with an air of fake menace.

  “If you did not kill it what did you do to it?” the boy was obviously not going to be discouraged not even by the meaningful looks his parents were shooting at him. Kormak guessed that they did not want him upsetting the other children. He was of an age where parental disapproval was only going to goad him on though.

  “I exorcised the evil spirit in the body. Without it to provide animation, the corpse failed.”

  “Can the spirit come back and find another body?”

  Kormak shook his head. “My blade destroyed it.”

  “The Priests of the Sun say souls are immortal,” said Radney.

  “This was a cursed soul. Kormak sent it to the Shadow,” Brandon said.

  Did I, Kormak wondered? “I don’t think so. I don’t think this was the soul that originally animated the body. I think it was a shade, a fragment of the Shadow that crept in after the original soul departed, the way beggars in the big city occupy the ruins of an abandoned house.”

  “Why would it do that?” the boy asked. “And where do such shades come from?”

  “Now, Radney,” said Lady Gena. “That’s enough. Let Sir Kormak eat his breakfast in peace. He’ll answer your questions later, if he wants to.”

  “But mother…”

  “No buts Radney!” The boy fell silent in the face of his mother’s disapproval in a way he had not for his father. Kormak guessed Brandon was an indulgent parent particularly to his boys. He looked at the small, happy family of the knight and wondered what it would have been like to have grown up as part of such a family and not as a ward of the Dawn. He would have been a different man today, that was certain.

  “Did you kill the wight?” Rob, the smallest boy asked. He sounded afraid and Kormak guessed he just wanted reassurance that the monster would not come for him. Kormak smiled and nodded and the boy screamed and ran away happily to play.

  “I see you still wear your sword at the table,” said Gena.

  “He’s a Guardian, my love,” said Brandon. “He would feel undressed without it. I dare say he would rather appear at table without his trousers than that blade.”

  Gena swatted at her husband. “What a terrible thing to say.”

  “Ask him whether it’s true,” said Brandon. His wife made it clear that she would do no such thing. Kormak ate and listened and watched. He liked it here. It was peaceful and he wanted to enjoy that while he could. Soon he would return to a hunt that could end only in death.

  “My old man and I used to come up here and look out over the land,” Brandon said. Kormak followed the expansive gesture of his meaty fist. Brandon’s ancestral keep stood atop a hill and this tower was the highest point in a long way. They had a clear view for leagues in all directions except northwards. Kormak could see the river and the fields and the huts in the village. There were the slightly larger dwellings of the freemen dotted about the landscapes. A straggle of woods here and there, and in the distance, to the north the great rampart of hills amid which lay the barrow. He could see the path they had followed last night where it emerged from the scree-strewn valley.

  “He probably came here with his father,” Kormak said. Brandon said something to the sentry and the man-at-arms made off down the stairs to get something to eat.

  “There always has to be somebody here, to keep a watch,” Brandon said, after the man had gone. “I told him we would do it.”

  “I worked that out for myself,” Kormak said.

  Sir Brandon fumbled inside his jerkin and produced a small metal flask. “You were always pretty smart,” he said, offering Kormak the flask.

  Kormak looked at it. He recognised the runes on the side. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “Yes. It’s the same flask I offered you the night before the Battle of Aeanar. It has the same cherry brandy in it too or, at least, it comes from the same casks. Drink some. It will warm you up. Always a cold breeze up here as autumn sets in." Kormak took a small sip just to be friendly. The brandy burned in his stomach. He handed the flask back to Brandon who took a gulp from it and left it sitting on the battlements in front of him. He turned and looked north in the same direction as Kormak had been looking.

  “Yes. He used to come up here with his old man. And no doubt my grandfather came up here with his father and on and on back until the time when the first Sunlander came to this blasted cold northern land. I sometimes wonder why we did— with the barrows and a blighted land under the Defiler’s curse right along our borders.”

  “You Sunlanders always want land— younger sons are always riding out to claim it. Your Kingdoms cover a quarter of the known world because of that.”

  “Well this land is ours now, for better or worse. No matter who once held it.”

  Kormak, remembering old lessons, repeated,“This land belonged to the Death Lords of Kharon in the Age of Shadow before the Solarians came from the Sunken Lands. Forghast, their capital, is not a hundred leagues from here. They were one of the powers of the world once. They halted the First Empire north of here, inflicted the greatest defeat the legions ever suffered on them. It broke the Empire in the end.”

  “Aye but the Solarians destroyed Kharon,” Brandon said.

  Kormak studied the line of hills on the horizon and thought about the barrow and its inhabitant. “The Death Lords destroyed themselves. Torghul the Defiler, the greatest of them, called down his curse upon the land. The Black Sun rose. The land turned sour. Armies of the dead stirred in their tombs. Plagues devoured the living. The Shadow came. The Solari legions fell back, leaving wardstones and watchtowers and a garrison to hold back the evil. They sealed the barrows where they could find them. The Empire fell into civil war. We live in the remains of what it left or so my teachers taught me. The Sunlander kingdoms emerged from the rubble of the Empire. To the North of us is the rubble of Kharon. I met one of its citizens last night, or rather I met his shadow.”

  “How do you do it?” Brandon asked suddenly. There was
an undercurrent of resentment in his voice now. He turned to confront Kormak almost as if he was angry with him.

  “Do what?” Kormak asked mildly. He was not intimidated even by a man as big as Brandon.

  “Go into those damn barrows. Where do you find the nerve? I could not last night. I was glad when you told us to wait outside.”

  “You could do it if you had a dwarf-forged blade.”

  “Not even then. Maybe if little Rob was down there I might try but I would be so scared I would be useless. I could not do it for some other man’s child. I could not do it for little Olaf.”

  Kormak looked at his friend’s bluff face. He was frowning and he looked guilty as if he was confessing to some crime.

  “You could do it if you had to.”

  “You don’t have to. You are a stranger here and you owe those people down there nothing and yet you went in there and faced that monster and freed those children.”

  “I swore an oath to do so a long time ago, when I took up this blade. To protect the innocent. To uphold the Law. To oppose the Shadow.”

  “Men swear oaths all the time, Kormak, and just as often break them. We’ve both known plenty of men who have done so.”

  “I keep my word. So do you.”

  “I swore an oath to protect those people down there. As their liege lord I swore to ward them and their families. Olaf is dead. I did not protect him very well, did I? I did not protect those children who went off to play yesterday.” There was a look of horror on Brandon’s face and Kormak could tell he felt just as guilty about the child’s death as he did. A sense of failure was eating away at him too.

  “How could you have saved him? The children were lost in a magically created mist and lured into the barrow by sorcery. You came with me last night. The other children are safe. What more could you have done? How did you fail them?” Kormak knew he was talking as much for himself as Brandon.

  “I did not go with you into the barrow.”

  “I did not ask you to.”

  “But I should have gone. Those children belong to my liegemen.”

  “It would not have helped. Your weapons would not have affected the wight.”

  “I would just have got in your way?” There was a challenge in Brandon’s voice. Kormak did not want to agree with him or make him feel any worse so he said nothing.

  “What sort of bastard would do such a thing, Kormak?” Brandon asked eventually, after the silence stretched too long. “What sort of man would break the wards on a barrow with a wight inside it?”

  “I aim to find out.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.”

  “If I don’t do it, it will happen again, somewhere else.” He looked at the line of hills in the distance. Low clouds hung over them and they seemed dank and dark and gloomy. “Those hills are full of barrows. There are worse things than wights in some of them. If someone plans on opening them all, they need to be stopped. Have you any idea who it might have been?”

  “It wasn’t any of my people,” said Brandon. “I would take an oath on it.”

  Kormak looked at him steadily. He didn’t say anything. He had found that in situations like this, silence was often the best option. People would talk just to fill it.

  “No one in the village would open a barrow. We grow up listening to the stories of the Old Lords of Darkness, of the Men of Kharon and the Shadow that devoured them. No one would dare go near that barrow. Why do you think I was scared to go with you last night? I am no coward, Kormak. You know that.”

  “I never said you were.”

  “There’s no man down there braver than me and I would not go near that old tomb unless I had to and I had a Guardian like yourself with me.”

  “It did not open itself.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “You saw the entrance. The runes were defaced. The seals were broken. Someone smashed them, knowing what would happen.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Sometimes people are not sane. Sometimes people do terrible things. Sometimes people are so scared that it haunts them and puts strange ideas in their heads and makes them do exactly what they are afraid of just to end the fear.”

  “You think one of my folk did that?”

  “I am asking if it’s possible.”

  Brandon laughed. There was relief in his laughter. “You’ve never lived in one of these small villages have you?”

  “Not since I was a boy.”

  “There are no secrets in a place like this. Everybody knows everybody else. If someone’s dog has pups its big news. I know it almost before the bitch does.”

  Kormak looked at the more distant huts. Brandon followed his gaze then shook his head.

  “If someone was taking walks into the Barrow Hills I would know about it. Look how bare the land is. You can see right across the fields. You can count the sheep on the hills from this tower. You can’t go any distance without the sentry spotting you.”

  “What about at night?”

  “Nobody in their right mind would head out into those hills at night. You saw what my men-at-arms were like. Hell, my people won’t go looking for lost animals in those hills even in daylight, and a sheep is worth a lot up here.”

  Kormak nodded. He had not really expected it to be anybody local. It was something that had needed to be asked. There were procedures that needed to be followed.

  “What are you going to do when you find whoever did this?” Brandon asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “There are those who call your Order assassins. I can see why.”

  “Kill a peasant they call it justice. Kill a nobleman they call you an assassin.”

  “I never knew you were so bitter.”

  “You want to know why I have killed more nobles than peasants?” Kormak’s voice was very soft.

  “I feel sure you are about to tell me.” Brandon licked his lips nervously.

  “Most peasants don’t have the education to work the high rituals of Shadow. Most of them can’t read. It’s the nobles and the clergy can do that. They are the ones who learn to call those things that should not be summoned.”

  Brandon took another swig of from his flask. He looked thoughtful.

  “They are also the ones with influential families and friends. You kill a nobleman there are always consequences, whispers and attempts at payback.”

  “What is your point, Kormak?”

  “You might want to think about that the next time a noble points at me and calls me an assassin behind my back.”

  Brandon took a step back and Kormak realised he had let a note of menace enter his voice, sufficient to worry even the knight.

  “That’s not why I brought it up,” Brandon said. He handed offered the flask again. It was a gesture of reconciliation. Kormak did not take it.

  “Then why did you?”

  “If you go around executing people with a king’s warrant, people up here might object.”

  “Would you?”

  “Not if you find the bastard on my land, I won’t. But you might not and you might need someone to speak up for you. Someone the local lords know.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying I’ll go with you. You might need me. I know the other landowners.”

  Kormak accepted the flask. “You sure it’s not just because you want to execute them yourself.”

  “Well, there is that,” said Brandon with a grin. It faded as quickly as it came. “I am serious, Kormak. Whoever opened that barrow deserves death. I won’t kill a man lightly but I will kill him for that. I owe little Olaf and his folks that much.”

  “I can’t say as I blame you,” said Kormak. “But we’ll have to find whoever did it first and that might take some time and you have lands to watch over.”

  “Then I’ll ride with you a ways and turn back if it takes too long.”

  “You have some idea who did this, do you?”

  “There were some tra
vellers who passed through a week or so ago, skirting our land. Some shepherds saw them, said they looked pretty strange. Some Tinkers were here just a couple of days before you arrived. They were heading north to Hungerdale and most likely beyond.”

  “Tinkers?”

  “They come and go, they trade with the hill-tribes and the miners at Elderdale. A wagon passed on the old road a few days ago.”

  “You think the hill-tribes might have something to do with this? They are descended from the Men of Kharon and some of their shamans and witch-women still keep to the old ways.”

  “It’s possible. They used to raid along the border but we have not had any trouble for years.”

  “Maybe some of them have decided that opening a barrow might be trouble enough. The hill people have no love for you Sunlanders.”

  “Is that the voice of experience talking there, Kormak?”

  “I am from the highlands of Aquilea.”

  “The Aquileans bear no love for we Sunlanders either. You raid the borders of north-west Taurea constantly.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Your kinfolk do.”

  “I have no kinfolk.”

  “Your compatriots then,” Kormak shrugged. Brandon seemed to realise that he might have given offence.

  “You really think it might be the hill-tribes?”

  Kormak shook his head. Brandon looked at him and a realisation struck him. It was obvious from the expression on his face. He straightened his shoulders and looked directly at Kormak.

  “It was lucky for us you were here,” said Brandon eventually. There was a question in his voice. He was clearly wondering what had brought the Guardian to this part of the world.

  “Luck had nothing to do with it. I am looking for a necromancer called Morghael.”

  “Why?”

  “He took advantage of one of the battles down south to raise a regiment of the walking dead from the bodies left behind. Both sides in the civil war contributed to his army. He terrorised a fair bit of the Duchy of Osterlund.”

  “I had not heard this.”

  “You will. The rumours will come North in the spring.”

  “If he has an army you’re going to have trouble with him.”