by Markus Heitz
“Not only me.”
“Curse your modesty. Benna has played his part, and our good friend General Ganmark, and Faithful too, but no one could deny this is your work. Your commitment, your single-mindedness, your swiftness to act. You shall have a great triumph, just as the heroes of ancient Aulcus did. You shall ride through the streets of Talins and my people will shower you with flower petals in honor of your many victories.” Benna grinned, but Monza couldn’t join him. She’d never had much taste for congratulations. “They will cheer far louder for you, I think, than they ever will for my own sons. They will cheer far louder even than they do for me, their rightful lord, to whom they owe so much.” It seemed that Orso’s smile slipped, and his face looked tired, and sad, and worn without it. “They will cheer, in fact, a little too loudly for my taste.”
There was the barest flash of movement at the corner of her eye, enough to make her bring up her hand on an instinct.
The wire hissed taut around it, snatching it up under her chin, crushing it chokingly tight against her throat.
Benna started forward. “Mon—” There was a glint of metal as Prince Ario stabbed him in the neck. He missed his throat, caught him just under the ear.
Orso stepped carefully back as blood speckled the tiles with red. Foscar’s mouth fell open, wine glass dropping from his hand, shattering on the floor.
Monza tried to scream, but only spluttered through her half-shut windpipe, made a sound like a pig honking. She fished at the hilt of her dagger with her free hand but someone caught her wrist, held it fast. Faithful Carpi, pressed up tight against her left side.
“Sorry,” he muttered in her ear, pulling her sword from its scabbard and flinging it clattering across the room.
Benna stumbled, gurgling red drool, one hand clutched to the side of his face, black blood leaking out between white fingers. His other hand fumbled for his sword while Ario watched him, frozen. He drew a clumsy foot of steel before General Ganmark stepped forward and stabbed him, smoothly and precisely—once, twice, three times. The thin blade slid in and out of Benna’s body, the only sound the soft breath from his gaping mouth. Blood shot across the floor in long streaks, began to leak out into his white shirt in dark circles. He tottered forwards, tripped over his own feet and crashed down, half-drawn sword scraping against the marble underneath him.
Monza strained, every muscle trembling, but she was held helpless as a fly in honey. She heard Gobba grunting with effort in her ear, his stubbly face rubbing against her cheek, his great body warm against her back. She felt the wire cut slowly into the sides of her neck, deep into the side of her hand, held fast against her throat. She felt the blood running down her forearm, into the collar of her shirt.
One of Benna’s hands crawled across the floor, reaching out for her. He lifted himself an inch or two, veins bulging from his neck. Ganmark leaned forwards and calmly ran him through the heart from behind. Benna quivered for a moment, then sagged, pale cheek smeared with red. Dark blood crept out from under him, worked its way down the cracks between the tiles.
“Well.” Ganmark leaned down and wiped his sword on the back of Benna’s shirt. “That’s that.”
Mauthis watched, frowning, slightly puzzled, slightly irritated, slightly bored, as though at a set of figures that wouldn’t quite add.
Orso gestured at the body. “Get rid of that, Ario.”
“Me?” The Prince’s lip curled even further.
“Yes, you. And you can help him, Foscar. The two of you must learn what needs to be done to keep our family in power.”
“No!” Foscar stumbled away. “I’ll have no part of this!” He turned and ran from the room, his boots slapping against the marble floor.
“That boy is soft as a lady’s glove,” muttered Orso at his back. “Ganmark, help him.”
Monza’s bulging eyes followed them as they dragged Benna’s corpse out through the doors to the balcony, Ganmark grim and careful at the head end, Ario cursing as he daintily took the boots. They heaved Benna up onto the balustrade and rolled him off. Like that he was gone.
“Ah!” squawked Ario, waving one hand. “Damn it! You scratched me!”
Ganmark stared back at him. “I apologize, your Highness. Murder can be a painful business.”
The Prince looked round for something to wipe his bloody hands on. He reached for the rich hangings beside the window.
“Not there!” snapped Orso. “That’s Kantic silk, at fifty scales a piece!”
“Where, then?”
“Find something else, or leave them red! Sometimes I wonder if your mother told the truth about your paternity, boy.” Ario wiped his hands sulkily on the front of his shirt while Monza stared, helpless, face burning from lack of air. Orso frowned over at her, a blurred black figure through the wet in her eyes, the hair tangled across her face. “Is she still alive? Whatever are you about, Gobba?”
“Fucking wire’s caught on her hand,” hissed the bodyguard in her ear.
“Find another way to be done with her, then, lackwit.”
“I’ll do it.” Faithful pulled the dagger from her belt, still pinning her wrist with his other hand. “I really am sorry.”
“Just get to it!” growled Gobba.
The blade went back, steel glinting in a shaft of light. Monza stomped down on Gobba’s foot with all the strength she had left. The bodyguard grunted, grip slipping on the wire, and she dragged it away from her neck, growling, twisting hard as Carpi stabbed at her.
The blade went well wide of the mark, slid in under her bottom rib. Cold metal, but it felt burning hot, a line of fire from her stomach to her back. It slid right through and the point pricked Gobba’s gut.
“Gah!” He let go the wire and Monza lashed at him with her elbow and sent him stumbling. She shrieked, wailed, blubbered, mindlessly. Faithful was caught off-guard, fumbled the knife as he pulled it out of her and sent it spinning across the floor. She kicked at him, missed his groin and caught his hip, bent him over. She snatched at the grip of a dagger at his belt, dragged it from its sheath, but her cut hand was clumsy and he caught her wrist before she could ram the blade into him. They wrestled with it, teeth bared, gasping spit in each others’ faces, lurching back and forward, their hands sticky with her blood.
“Kill her!”
There was a crunch and her head was full of light. The floor cracked against her skull, slapped her in the back. She spat blood, mad screams guttering to a long drawn croak, clawing at the smooth floor with her nails.
“Fucking bitch!” The heel of Gobba’s big boot cracked down on her right hand and sent pain lancing up her forearm, tore a sick gasp from her. His boot thudded down again across her knuckles, then her fingers, then her wrist. At the same time Faithful’s foot was thudding into her ribs, over and over, making her cough and shudder. Her shattered hand twisted, turned sideways on. Gobba’s heel crashed down and crushed it flat into the cold marble with a splintering of bone. She flopped back, hardly able to breathe, the room turning over, paintings of history’s winners grinning down.
“You stabbed me, you dumb old bastard! You stabbed me!”
“You’re hardly even cut, fathead! You should’ve kept a hold on her!”
“I should stab the useless pair of you!” hissed Orso’s voice. “Just get it done!”
Gobba’s great fist came down, dragged Monza up by her throat. She tried to grab at him with her left hand but all her strength had leaked out through the hole in her side, the cuts in her neck. Her clumsy fingertips only smeared red traces across the side of his stubbly face. Her arm was dragged away, twisted sharply behind her back.
“Where’s Hermon’s gold?” came Gobba’s rough voice. “Eh, Murcatto? What did you do with the gold?”
Monza forced her head up. “Lick my arse, cocksucker.” Not clever, perhaps, but from the heart.
“There never was any gold!” snapped Faithful. “I told you that, pig!”
“There’s this much.” One by one, Gobba twiste
d the battered rings from her dangling fingers, already bloating, turning angry purple, bent and shapeless as rotten sausages. “Good stone, that,” he said, peering at the ruby. “Seems a waste of decent flesh, though. Why not give me a moment with her? A moment’s all it would take.”
Prince Ario tittered. “Speed isn’t always something to be proud of.”
“For pity’s sake!” Orso’s voice. “We’re not animals. Over the balcony and let us be done. I am late for breakfast.”
She felt herself dragged, head lolling. Sunlight stabbed at her. She was lifted, limp boots hissed against stone. Blue sky turning. Up onto the balcony. The breath scraped at her nose, shuddered in her chest. She twisted, kicked. Her body, struggling vainly to stay alive.
“Let me make sure of her.” Ganmark’s voice.
“How sure do we need to be?” Blurry through the bloody hair across her eyes she saw Orso’s lined face. “I hope you understand. My great-grandfather was a mercenary. A low-born fighting man, who seized power by the sharpness of his mind and sword together. I cannot allow another mercenary to seize power in Talins.”
She meant to spit in his face, but all she did was blow bloody drool down her own chin. “Fuck yourse—”
Then she was flying.
Her torn shirt billowed and flapped against her tingling skin. She turned over, and over, and the world tumbled around her. Blue sky with shreds of cloud, black towers at the mountain top, grey rock face rushing past, yellow-green trees and sparkling river, blue sky with shreds of cloud, and again, and again, faster, and faster.
Cold wind ripped at her hair, roared in her ears, hissed between her teeth along with her terrified breath. She could see each tree, now, see each branch, each leaf. They surged up towards her. She opened her mouth to scream—
Twigs snatched, grabbed, lashed at her. A broken branch knocked her spinning. Wood cracked and tore around her as she plunged down, down, and crashed into the mountainside. Her legs splintered under her plummeting weight, her shoulder broke apart against firm earth. But rather than dashing her brains out on the rocks, she only shattered her jaw against her brother’s bloody chest, his mangled corpse wedged against the base of a tree.
Which was how Benna Murcatto saved his sister’s life.
She bounced from the corpse, three-quarters senseless, and down the steep mountainside, over and over, flailing like a broken doll. Rocks, and roots, and hard earth clubbed and battered, punched and crushed her, as if she was broken apart with a hundred hammers.
She tore through a patch of bushes, thorns whipping and clutching. She rolled, and rolled, down the sloping earth in a cloud of dirt and leaves. She tumbled over a tree root, crumpled on a mossy rock. She slid slowly to a stop, on her back, and was still.
“Huuuurrrrhhh…”
Stones clattered down around her, sticks and gravel. Dust slowly settled. She heard wind, creaking in the branches of the trees, crackling in the leaves. Or her own breath, creaking and crackling in her broken throat. The sun flickered through black branches, jabbing at one eye. The other was dark. Flies buzzed, zipping and swimming in the warm morning air. She was down with the rubbish from Orso’s kitchens. Sprawled out helpless in the midst of the rotten leaves, and the cooking slime, and the stinking offal left over from the last month’s magnificent meals. Tossed out with the waste.
“Huuurrhhh…”
A jagged, mindless sound. She was embarrassed by it, almost, but couldn’t stop making it. Animal horror. Mad despair. The groan of the dead, in hell. Her eye darted desperately around. She saw the wreck of her right hand, a shapeless, purple glove with a bloody gash in the side. One finger trembled slightly. Its tip brushed against torn skin on her elbow. The forearm was folded in half, a broken-off twig of grey bone sticking through bloody silk. It didn’t look real. Like a cheap theatre prop.
“Huurrhhh…”
The fear had hold of her now, swelling with every breath. She couldn’t move her head. She couldn’t move her tongue in her mouth. She could feel the pain, gnawing at the edge of her mind. A terrible mass, pressing up against her, crushing every part of her, worse, and worse, and worse.
“Huurhh… uurh…”
Benna was dead. A streak of wet ran from her flickering eye and she felt it trickle slowly down her cheek. Why was she not dead? How could she not be dead?
Soon, please. Before the pain got any worse. Please, let it be soon.
“Uurh… uh… uh.”
Please, death.
MARKUS HEITZ
Translated by Sheelagh Alabaster
www.orbitbooks.net
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Table of Contents
A Preview of THE FATE OF THE DWARVES
Copyright Page
The Third I dedicate to those who read my dedication without the dedication you have shown, its sister volumes would have stood alone
“Impressive height or exceptional length of a limb is not the be all and end all of a creature. What I say is: the taller you are, the more likely you are to get hit!”
—Boïndil “Ireheart,” Doubleblade of the Firstling Clan of the Swinging Axes
“Now and then you hear malicious remarks about dwarves. They are said to be of inferior build, to be cranky, to have a weird sense of humor; it is told that they only drink beer that is as black as night and are not able to appreciate music unless a hundred voices are bellowing in unison. But I say: only when you have been a guest in their majestic halls, as once I was, should you have the right to pronounce on these rumors and confirm them all to be true. Let us not laugh at them as if they were lovable children with long beards, but, on the contrary, let us praise the magnificent way they have preserved all of us from total destruction. More than once.”
—Excerpts from the ten-volume work My Life and Uniquely Heroic Exploits—the memoirs of the Incredible Rodario
“Ih did aforetimes ask a dwerff as what, other than such dwerff, he fain had byn born. Ih offert the chois of myghtie draggon, all seeing magus or his own god vraccas. He did look at me in wonder and did shayk his hed, saying: ye myghtie draggons were perforce slain by a dwerff, syns draggons are no more; ye all seeing magus lykewyse was vanquysht by a dwerff, syns he is no more. And vraccas neyther schal ih be, for ther be no thing left to mak, better than his dwerffis.”
—Taken from “Descryptions of ye Ffolk of Girdlegyrd: Manneris and Karacterystycks” in the Great Archive of Viransiénsis, drawn up by Tanduweyt, collected by M. A. Het, Magister Folkloricum, in the 4299th solar cycle
Prologue
Girdlegard,
Gray Range on the border of the Fifthling Kingdom,
Spring, 6234th Solar Cycle
Gronsha stood still, listening intently in the swirling fog that his yellow eyes were quite unable to penetrate, though he was one of the finest scouts in Prince Ushnart’s army. To tell the truth, he was one of only three scouts still left to Prince Ushnart. The others who had set off to reconnoiter for the Prince now lay at the Stone Gate, their heads struck clean from their shoulders.
He could hear footsteps. Many footsteps.
Swiftly he grabbed hold of his jagged two-handed sword, ready to wield it. He and his troop had made the fatal error of being over-confident when they had left the Subterranean Kingdom by way of the Stone Gate and seen the enemy recoiling before their superior numbers. And now the Bearded Ones were clinging to their heels as tenaciously as gnome excrement sticks to your boots.
Not that he was frightened of the Groundlings. Black Water, blood of the Perished Lands, flowed now in his veins and rendered him immortal. Unless, of course, someone were to strike his head clean off his shoulders.
But the enemy, unfortunately, were very good at that: even their stunted physique was no handicap there.
If they couldn’t reach the neck with their axes, they would slice at the legs. An opponent sunk to his knees was easy to decapitate.
In the Groundlings’ northern kingdom, a place thought more or less deserted, they had co
me upon an unexpectedly large enemy band. He and his two fellow scouts, facing defeat, had chosen to turn tail, heading back to the Outer Lands. Maybe they could locate another escape route back to Prince Ushnart’s camp to warn him about the Groundlings; could they manage to find an exit that did not involve a battle with a horde of ax-wielding warriors?
In the Outer Lands, it was said, it was his own tribe that reigned—the orcs. So far he had not come across any, but he wouldn’t object to a little support.
“It’s steamy as wash-day. You can’t see a thing in this fog,” he overheard one of the Groundlings complain. It was essential for any self-respecting scout that he be able to understand the language spoken by the enemy.
“You’d think the wretched fog itself was wanting to help the swine.”
Gronsha objected to the term swine—it was an insult indeed to be called a pig by that barrel-sized runt of a creature. Pigs were all right to eat, but they were nothing much to look at. And he, after all, was well built, twice the size of one of those Beard-Faces. Instinctively he tensed his muscles in anger. This made his armor grate against the rock behind, signaling his whereabouts to the dwarves.
They’d heard it.
“Ah, we’ve got him.”
Oh no, you haven’t, Beard-Face. Gronsha sprinted away to shake off his pursuers, but again the dull metallic clank betrayed him.
He’d no idea how far he’d gone or in which direction he’d been running. And where on earth were his companions?
He only knew that it was dark all around him. Was he in a cave? He pressed up against the nearest wall, holding his breath to listen out for the enemy.
“Halt!” one of them ordered, quite close. He could hear the creak of boots as his pursuer stood still. “Can you hear him?”
No answer.