Carnifex (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 1)

by Prior, D. P.

  The shield wall parted for him as he drew near, but he remained where he was. Instead, Thumil, Aristodeus, Rugbeard, and Lucius came down from the platform and worked their way to the front of the phalanx.

  Aristodeus’s eyes were glittering and unblinking as they continuously panned the cavern, his slender metal rod following in their wake. Its end was bulbous and tipped with crystal or glass. To all intents and purposes, it looked like a wand from the tales of sorcery beyond the Farfall Mountains.

  Thumil clamped a hand on Carnifex’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. He gave a single, curt nod that conveyed a hundred things: he was proud, scared, determined, relieved, and in among it all, he’d be planning, strategizing, making the most of his resources. Is that why the philosopher was here? Had Thumil realized the danger early on and sought every avenue of help?

  “It’s a golem from Gehenna,” Aristodeus said. He meant it for Carnifex, though his eyes never strayed from the cavern.

  Lucius confirmed it with a tap of the page he had open. “The same section that mentions the Axe of the Dwarf Lords. When the city was founded, hundreds of these creatures attacked our people, and without the axe, we likely wouldn’t be here today.”

  “Axe my arse!” Rugbeard said. “There ain’t no axe in the Annals, save for the golden one floating above King Arios’s throne in Arnoch, and everyone knows that’s just a legend.”

  “For the last time,” Lucius said, “it’s the same axe. You’re just trying to save face because you hadn’t read the Annals as thoroughly as you like to think. You were just a pedagogue, for shog’s sake, not a scholar. There is a difference.”

  “Yes, well, if you could both shut up,” Aristodeus said, “these are issues that can be settled later. If there is a later. Axe or no axe, there’s still a golem to be dealt with.”

  “And you know how?” Carnifex asked. “I mean, scarolite can harm it, as well as hem it in, but—”

  Thumil wagged a finger at him. “Is there a tool repository?” he asked Rugbeard.

  “In the mines.”

  Thumil rolled his eyes. “Fine, then I need volunteers to go down there. If we’re going to beat this thing—”

  “I’ll go, sir,” a Red Cloak said from atop the platform. He had a shield that was as tall as he was, and in his other hand he carried a monstrous mace.

  “Good man, Grimwart,” Thumil said. “Anyone el—?”

  A pustule of rock erupted in the middle of the phalanx, scattering dwarves as it sprouted a head and arms, and finally came to stand upon two granite legs.

  “Emet!” Aristodeus cried, bringing his wand to bear on the creature’s forehead, where violet flames defined the symbols: תמא

  A beam of brilliant white light shone forth from the tip of the wand. The golem staggered back and raised its arms to protect its face.

  “Aim for the letter on the right,” Aristodeus said. “Hit it with everything you’ve got. It’s the only way.”

  Spears were hurled from the phalanx, all glancing from the golem’s stony flesh. A Red Cloak ran in, jabbed up at the head, but his shaft snapped. Black Cloaks stepped away from the walls, taking aim with their crossbows. Bolts struck stone and ricocheted harmlessly away.

  The golem ducked its head out of the light and barreled into the dwarves in front of it. Screams went up, bones crunched under foot, weapons skittered away. The rest of the dispersed phalanx closed in all around, dwarves hacking and hammering with everything they had, but it was never going to be enough.

  Carnifex forced his way through them, fighting for every step. “Make way!” he yelled, “Make way!”

  With every inch of progress, magma streamed through his veins. His thews swelled, his skin tightened, same as it did when training with weights. A chasm opened within him, and from it welled up springs of courage such as he’d never known. The words of a tavern song roared forth from his lips.

  “I once knew a girl with a hairy chest, a hogshead keg instead of breasts.”

  The boom of his voice threw the dwarves in his way into confusion, and he surged past them.

  “She tapped me a drink, and I gagged at the stink—”

  The golem saw him coming and lunged.

  Carnifex swayed past its hand and sprang for its knee. The instant his boot touched stone, he bounded and brought the pickaxe down, smack through the center of the א symbol on its forehead. The spike bit deep. Granite fractured, and as Carnifex fell, a chunk was ripped away. He hit the ground hard, flat on his back. His helm clanged against rock, and his vision swam. His pickaxe slammed against the floor and shot away, and the chunk of dislodged granite clattered to a halt beside his head. Looming over him, the golem was a wavering blur. He blinked rapidly to bring it into focus. It teetered, and he rolled aside as it toppled to the ground and shattered into a thousand pieces.

  WHAT’S IN A NAME?

  Cheers went up from the dwarves, but all Carnifex could do was close his eyes and lie back, trying to catch his breath.

  “You did it, Carn!”—Kal.

  “Brother? Are you all right?” Lucius said.

  “Splendid,” he heard Aristodeus say. “There’s always a grain of truth in legends.”

  “Just don’t forget who found the story,” Lucius said.

  Fingers curled around Carnifex’s wrist and pulled him into a sitting position. Another tug, and he was on his feet, shaking the grogginess from his head. The first thing that came into focus was the glint of gold from Thumil’s helm.

  “You did well, son. I’m proud of you.”

  Carnifex stared at him blankly. He felt suddenly numb, as if all the fire in his blood had been doused with cold water. His energy was ebbing away, and he felt the black dog pawing at the edges of his mind.

  A shadow of worry flickered across Thumil’s face, and he did his best to stave off the depression he must have known was coming over his friend.

  “You missed out my favorite line, Carn: the one that gives the reason for the stink coming off the lassie’s nipples.”

  “Huh?” Carnifex said. “Oh, the song.”

  “Her kegs were filled with Ironbelly’s, remember? Was it me or you that made that one up?”

  “That was one of yours,” Carnifex said with a grin that threatened to crack the plaster setting over his face.

  “It was?” Thumil rubbed his wispy beard and frowned. “Perhaps we should keep it between ourselves.”

  He clapped Carnifex on both shoulders, gave the cough he always gave when he was about to change hats, and then turned away to the Red Cloaks poking at the rubble that had once been the golem.

  As Thumil moved off, barking orders, sending teams down into the mines to make sure they were secure, Aristodeus came to stand looming over Carnifex.

  “Bravely done, Carnifex. Definitely your mother’s son.”

  Carnifex didn’t need to hear that right now. He turned away toward Kal.

  “You could be great,” Aristodeus said. “Truly great.” His tone was tinged with regret, as if he knew something; as if it were a shame Carnifex would never live up to his expectations.

  “What do you mean ‘could be’?” Kal said, pulling Carnifex into a fierce embrace. “What could be greater than what he just did?”

  Aristodeus closed his eyes and drew in a long, slow breath. “You’d be surprised.” When he opened his eyes, they had lost some of their blueness, as if hoarfrost rimed them. “We shall have to see what can be done.”

  “About what?” Carnifex said.

  Aristodeus made a fist, pressed it to his mouth. His brow crinkled with the effort of whatever he was thinking about. “I read patterns. Patterns in the past, in the present, both of which afford me glimpses of the future. With prudential judgement, it is possible to avert some things and foster others. In essence, it’s like a game—you have chess here? No? Well, that’s something we should remedy. The only real difference is in the complexity. More than that, I cannot say, not without unduly influencing events that may or may not p
lay into the other side’s hands.”

  “What other side?” Carnifex said.

  “Who, don’t you mean?” Lucius said. “The same ‘who’ that led Maldark astray, and nearly brought about the Unweaving of all the worlds.”

  “Sektis Gandaw?” Kal said.

  “No, stupid,” Lucius said. “The Deceiver. The Lord of the Abyss. The Demiurgos.”

  Carnifex snorted and shook his head. “Thank shog it’s not the queen of the fairies, then. Come on, Kal, there’s dead and injured dwarves to attend to, which has to take first place over theologizing.”

  “I do not theologize,” Aristodeus said. “I find the suggestion insulting.”

  “As you should,” Carnifex said. “Oh, and laddie, before I go, what was that with the symbols on the golem’s head? Letters, you called them.”

  “A Supernal language,” Aristodeus said. “Same as your Old Dwarven. Different tongues and different scripts, but from a common source. We have them on Urddynoor, too, though they go by different names.”

  “Supernal?” Kal said. “What’s that, then?”

  Lucius rolled his eyes and sighed. “Beyond the Void. The Supernal Realm? Domain of the All-Father, the supreme ruler of the Gods of Arnoch?”

  “Sounds like more theologizing to me,” Carnifex said.

  Aristodeus gave him a venomous grin. “The homunculi of Gehenna are well-versed in both tongues. Their lore is rife with Supernal words and phrases, which is to be expected, if you remember that their father, the Demiurgos, was once a denizen of that realm.”

  “He fell through the Void,” Lucius said, “with his sister and bro—”

  “Yes, yes,” Aristodeus said. “But your brother has already made it clear he’s no time for metaphysics. Golems are creations of the homunculi, inanimate sculptures of clay that are given life through lore. The letters on the golem’s head spelled ‘Emet’, which means ‘truth’. The language is read from right to left, so if you knock off the first letter, aleph, you are left with ‘Met’, which means ‘death’. It’s a neat trick, and one that is prevalent in the legends of my world, which has had its fair share of influences from the homunculi over the centuries.”

  “That’s a lot of power in such a small word,” Carnifex said.

  “Precisely,” Aristodeus said. “And there’s even more in a name, which presumably is why you dwarves attach such importance to them, and recite those interminable lists of genealogy.”

  Carnifex stiffened. It sounded like a slight on Droom, on his family.

  Aristodeus must have seen something in his eyes and stepped back. “You misunderstand. Maybe interminable wasn’t the best word. Your ancestors thought a name was so important, they devised a means of stripping a dwarf of it. Totally. Absolutely. Irrevocably.”

  The idea caused Carnifex to shudder. A dwarf’s name was sacred to him. It defined him, made him a person, and not just a bag of bones and blood. Because that’s what the Technocrat persuaded Maldark the Fallen they were: nothing but servants he’d shaped from raw, insentient matter. No better than the golems created by the homunculi. No wonder Maldark had despaired.

  “No they didn’t,” Lucius said. “That’s a misreading of the Annals. You have to know the genre before you give too much credence to what a particular volume says. I should know. It’s what I specialize in: the liminal spaces between myth and reality, between legend and lore.”

  “So, no nameless dwarves, is that what you’re saying?” Aristodeus said. “No punishment worse than death?”

  “Purely literary,” Lucius said. “You seriously think the Founders had the ability to take a name out of time?”

  “Not by themselves,” Aristodeus said. “They were aided by the homunculi, creatures of chaos and deception made from the same material that constitutes the Abyss, where time has no meaning. They have the lore to alter time, believe me. I’ve seen first hand. But for something like name-stripping, something so localized, they’d have needed a buffer, something that could weather forces inimical to Aethir; and something that could insulate the victim, so that only he was affected and no one else.”

  “Aye,” Rugbeard said. “Scarolite’s what the Annals say. Did you not read that bit, Lucius?”

  “Of course I read it. A helm of scarolite’s all that’s mentioned. Nothing about how the stripping was done. All Aristodeus says has no basis in the Annals. Some passages are not meant to be taken literally. And even if it were possible to remove a name from time, why would you even want to?”

  “When your population is in peril of extinction,” Aristodeus said, “as would have been the case for the refugees of Arnoch—”

  “Oh, please!” Lucius said. “And you call yourself a philosopher.”

  “Who decides what’s myth and what’s history?” Rugbeard said. “You? My view: that story’s more credible than the flying axe you set so much store by.”

  “What I was trying to say,” Aristodeus said, “was that they needed some alternative to the execution of criminals.”

  “Aye,” Rugbeard said. “So, try not to be obtuse, Lucius. You know the tale. Times were lean. Crime was rife. Bloody crime. And yet the Founders couldn’t afford to lose a single dwarf. It was bad enough if someone was murdered. Doubly bad if you had to kill the killer, too. But the name-stripping was deemed worse than death by just about everyone. It took away a dwarf’s lineage. These nameless dwarves would have become pariahs of no social standing, living apart from the main populace, but at least they would have lived. Generations later, when the population was stable, the practice was banned.”

  Violent criminals, outcast from dwarven society. Carnifex started to get an idea of his own. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it again. He’d seen how these debates went with Lucius. He’d be a laughing stock, or simply snubbed. But he thought he was onto something, nevertheless. It would explain why the baresarks lived like they did; why they had no traditions or heritage, no roll call of family names.

  He looked out toward the headframe instead of throwing his idea into the discussion. It looked like Thumil was commandeering the housing at its base as a field hospital. The injured were carefully carried inside, whereas the dead were simply covered in their cloaks and, for now, left where they had fallen.

  “So, why isn’t there any record of it?” Lucius said. “Besides the vague account in the Annals? Myth is woolly, Rugbeard; history is packed with details that can be verified. If name-stripping really happened, why is there no mention of who it was done to?”

  Aristodeus slapped himself in the forehead. “Because the names were taken out of time, you nincompoop!”

  “And if there’s no names,” Rugbeard explained, “there would have been no record of them. Even if there had been before the name was stripped.”

  “Which of course makes no sense,” Aristodeus said, “while making perfect sense.”

  “Come on, Kal,” Carnifex said. He started to head out into the cavern to see if there was anything he could do to help, but then something else struck him, and unfortunately, Aristodeus seemed to be the best person to ask. “What if there are more of them? More golems in the mines?”

  Aristodeus glanced at Lucius and then back at Carnifex. “Judging by the passages Lucius showed me, I’d say it’s very likely. Or at least likely more will come.”

  “And how are we supposed to stand against them? What if they attack the city?”

  “Why do you think our ancestors had the Axe of the Dwarf Lords?” Lucius said.

  “They didn’t,” Rugbeard said. “That’s just a myth.”

  “Then how do you explain this?” Lucius held the open book beneath Rugbeard’s nose. “I found this yesterday, something I’ve suspected was in the Annals for quite some time. You see, there’s more than just the mythical passages about Arnoch that mention the Pax Nanorum—the Axe of the Dwarf Lords. This here is from the time of the Founders, and it mentions the axe in the context of incursions from Gehenna: golems, just like the one we’ve seen here tod
ay.”

  “Then, the Annals have been altered,” Rugbeard said.

  “How?” Lucius said. “Look at the page, the binding. It’s all intact, all consistent. I’d say it’s more likely you just missed it, while you were skipping the denser sections in search of good yarns with which to bolster your waning popularity.”

  Rugbeard’s face reddened. He clenched his jaw and looked like he was about to explode.

  “Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?” Carnifex said. “That you should just stumble across a reference to golems in the mines, and then one happens to appear.”

  “Coincidences happen,” Aristodeus said. “And no, there’s no magical connection, if that’s what you’re implying. Sometimes, I think dwarves will believe anything, so long as it isn’t the truth.”

  “What’s important to me,” Lucius said, “is that if the golems are for real, then it’s likely the Axe of the Dwarf Lords is, too. The last mention in the Annals is of it being lost in Gehenna, when the Founders pursued the golems after a particularly nasty incursion. Apparently, no one returned.”

  Carnifex looked round at the Red Cloaks milling about the cavern, checking the fallen to see which ones to carry to the field hospital, and which to leave beneath their cloaks. Some wept freely. Most would have known each other. He should have been with them, not listening to Lucius and Aristodeus spouting their nonsense. So what if their theories were true? It didn’t help those who had fallen. Didn’t help their families to grieve their losses.

  But a nagging thread of worry had woven its way into the back of his mind. He wished he could shrug it off, but it was already taking root.

  Coincidence.

  Despite his protestations to the contrary, the philosopher didn’t believe any such thing. There was design here. Unseen forces were at play. First the homunculus breaking into the Scriptorium, and now a golem, a creature made by the homunculi, entering the mines. What if Lucius was right, and there really was an Axe of the Dwarf Lords? If the golems were coming again in force, would the dwarves need to find the axe if they were to have any chance of surviving the onslaught?