‘Hold!’ he called. ‘Many of the wards are still active. We cannot cross yet.’
Beregthor finished chanting. He made a complex pass with the Keeper of Roads before the gate. The gestures hurt Vrindum’s head to watch. He stared at the runefather, and he did not recognise the Fyreslayer before him.
Beregthor completed the gestures. In the centre of the gate, floating in the air, a large stone keyhole appeared. Beregthor lowered the Keeper and approached it. He made to insert the head of the weapon into the keyhole.
The latchkey grandaxe was a symbol. The design of its blade represented the keys to glory. But it was also a true key. It opened the most secret vaults in the magmahold. And now it would open the final lock on the gate.
The wards that were still active glowed red. It was a cold colour. Reptilian. Anticipatory. Trumnir was looking at them with alarm. ‘I don’t think…’ he began.
Vrindum jumped onto the dais. He ran forward and grasped Beregthor’s shoulder, holding him back before he could place the key in the lock.
‘Runefather,’ he said, ‘the gate is still dangerous. Should we not wait?’
Beregthor ignored him. He strained forward.
Vrindum used both arms to restrain him. ‘Beregthor-Grimnir,’ he said, ‘will you not speak to us? Do you know where you are?’
Beregthor turned his head to face Vrindum. His eyes had sunken further yet. His skin was turning greyer with every passing moment.
On the back of his neck, something wriggled.
Vrindum looked closely. There was a small wound just beneath the edge of his helmet. The tip of a daemonic spine protruded from it. At the same moment, Beregthor opened his mouth.
The pink horrors had wounded the runefather deeper than anyone realised during the first battle. A thorn had pierced Beregthor’s flesh. It had been embedded in him, controlling him.
‘The Runefather bears a daemonic wound!’ Vrindum shouted.
Frethnir leapt forward to help. He had been freed of the pain of doubt, but now an agony a thousandfold worse had fallen on him. He had not acted when there was a chance, and now it was perhaps too late. He tried to reach for the thorn.
Beregthor twisted violently. He broke Vrindum’s grip and smashed the side of the grandaxe against the grimwrath berzerker’s skull, knocking him aside. He caught his son with the return sweep. His mouth was still open. His lips and tongue worked, trying to shape the sounds he was commanded to utter. His eyes widened. They were consumed with mortal horror. His soul struggled to silence the coming word. It failed. His voice ragged as if ripped apart by claws, he shouted a name. He sang a name.
‘Kaz’arrath!’
Three notes. Short, long, short. Three beats. Soft, strong, soft.
Now the wind returned. It exploded from Beregthor’s words with such force it smashed Vrindum flat. The runefather was suddenly the origin of the wind. He was the source of the song that had called the Drunbhor lodge to this place. The three-note refrain resounded across the bowl, echoing against the mountainsides.
Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath.
A song of triumph. And of summoning.
The wind howled the name. It shrieked over the Fyreslayers as if the combined force of the Typhornas Mountains had come to rage through this site. At the edges of the bowl, the growing night thickened. It swirled with dark tendrils, ready to burst. Beregthor kept his feet in the hurricane. He turned back toward the gate, his face slack.
Vrindum propelled himself up and forward. He did not know what would happen if Beregthor used the latchkey, but he did know it must not happen. What he had said to the runefather so many days ago was true: the events at Sibilatus had meaning. Every step of the journey had meaning, and the steps had led to a moment that could only mean ruin. So he threw himself at the hero of the Drunbhor, at the Fyreslayer he had followed his entire life. He would die for Beregthor. Now he attacked.
He swung Darkbane, and he howled with grief that he must do so. Filled with sorrow and dread, he was far from losing himself in the vortex of rage. He aimed Darkbane so the sides of the blades struck the shaft of the Keeper of Roads. He knocked it away from the keyhole, then rammed his shoulder into Beregthor. The runefather stumbled from the impact, then turned on Vrindum, his face contorted. Vrindum did not see the righteous anger of the Fyreslayers in his expression. He did not see the sacred fire of Grimnir. He saw only savagery, and a mindless malevolence.
Around the dais, the Fyreslayers were in uproar. Their most ferocious warrior was fighting the runefather. The world had lost all sense. Vrindum trusted that Trumnir, Harthum, the runesons and those who were closest could see the distorted, possessed face of Beregthor. But those further away would only be able to see an impossible conflict, the seed of a terrible schism.
Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath, cried the wind.
Beregthor raised the Keeper of Roads over his head and brought it down, aiming for Vrindum’s skull. The grimwrath berzerker dodged to one side. Beregthor was attacking with enormous power but little skill. The Keeper slammed against the dais, lodging itself in stone. Vrindum launched himself at Beregthor again, battering him hard enough to break his hold on the latchkey grandaxe. Beregthor stared at his empty hands, and he howled.
Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath. Short, long, short. A call. A summons.
The summons was answered.
The eight passes that formed the passages to the bowl erupted. The night gave birth to a horde of daemons. A legion of pink horrors and flamers cascaded down the slopes. Gales of demented laughter drowned out the cry of the wind. And to the north, striding behind the thousands of its army, a towering daemon appeared. It was winged. It stalked forward on long legs with multiple articulations. Its arms were almost as long, and it carried a staff in the shape of a giant iron key, whose head changed configuration second by second. Its own head was long and beaked, and its eyes blazed with the terrible cold red of the wards on the gate.
The arrival of the daemons restored some confidence to the fyrds of the Drunbhor. Here was a clear enemy. Here was a war that must be fought, however daunting the odds. And so the great mass of the vulkite berzerkers advanced in an expanding circle around the dais. They shook the earth too with the stamp of their feet and the thunder of their battlecries. The runesons leapt away from the dais, racing through the ranks in three separate directions to lead from the front. Trumnir took a fourth, while Harthum climbed atop his magmadroth and once again began to hammer out the beat of war.
Beregthor and Vrindum were alone on the dais, though Vrindum could feel the eyes of Kaz’arrath fixed upon them.
With the great daemon present, and the mirroring of its eyes and the warding runes, he understood what would happen if Beregthor turned the key and opened the way. The Drunbhor would not pass through. The warding would destroy any who tried. But the Keeper of Roads would permit the daemons to pour directly into the other lodge’s magmahold. This was the quest the daemons had goaded the Drunbhor into completing. The daemons had destroyed the gate in Sibilatus so the Drunbhor would seek and open this one, unleashing horror on the kin they had thought to help.
Vrindum stood between the runefather and the Keeper of Roads. Beregthor ran at him, hands extended like claws. Vrindum met his charge. He grappled with him. He pulled a dagger from his belt and stabbed sideways at the back of Beregthor’s neck. He felt the blade slice into flesh. It struck something hard, and he prayed to Grimnir it was the daemonic thorn.
‘Runefather,’ he pleaded. ‘Remember who you are. You are the greatest of the Drunbhor, and we have need of you now!’ He shoved deeper with the knife. Something severed. There was a sudden weakness in Beregthor’s limbs, and Vrindum wrestled him to the ground.
‘Hear the altar of war,’ Vrindum said. ‘Hear the true call. Hear the wrath of Grimnir. Free yourself of the grip of lies.’
Harthum
must have seen the struggle, for his booming hymn of battle grew louder yet. Vrindum’s frame blazed with the strength of his god. He saw the shine of holy fury in the runes on Beregthor’s forehead.
The runefather’s eyes cleared. Blackened coals burst into heroic fire once more. Vrindum released him, and Beregthor leapt to his feet. He stared at the gate, and at the Keeper of Roads embedded in the dais. His mouth twisted in anger and grief. He seized the grandaxe.
And paused.
A wave of grey settled over his features once more. He shook it off with effort. He turned to Vrindum. ‘I hear, old friend. I keep my honour to the last.’ He shuddered, leaning as if his body would unlock the gate if he did not force it away. Then he gave Vrindum a grim smile.
‘Frethnir will lead well,’ he said, and stormed off the dais. His roar parted the ranks of the Fyreslayers. On instinct they made way for their auric runefather. Krasnak bellowed and joined his master. Beregthor climbed his back into the throne for one final time. They drove deep into the gibbering daemonic legions.
Beregthor headed directly for Kaz’arrath. The Lord of Change was halfway across the bowl towards the lines of the Fyreslayers. Beregthor and the magmadroth plunged deeper and deeper into the roiling mass. The runefather’s attack was reckless. It was too fast. He was not leading the Drunbhor. He was leaving them behind.
Vrindum raced after him. Beregthor had no intention of surviving. He was intent merely on destroying as many abominations as he could before they overwhelmed him. Vrindum howled a denial to the fates and raced after the runefather. Beregthor would not be forced to make this sacrifice. Vrindum would fight by his side until the last of the daemons had been dispatched to oblivion.
The battle rhythm of the runesmiter rang through Vrindum’s being. The voice of Battlesmith Krunmir thundered over the battle, his recitation of the victories of the Drunbhor in harmony with the drumming of the war altar. Ahead, Vrindum saw the overwhelming odds turning against Beregthor. Krasnak mauled the daemons and burned them with bile. The Keeper of Roads rose high before coming down with destructive force. But the pink horrors kept coming, piling up on each other, reaching to drag at the runefather. Flamers closed in on Krasnak, and the magmadroth screeched as their unholy fire washed over his scales. His hide rippled, portions of his body in the first convulsions of change. Vulkite berzerkers were fighting furiously to come to Beregthor’s aid, but the mass of daemons slowed them down. They would not reach him before the sea of nightmares pulled him under.
Or before the dreadful author of the tragedy arrived to destroy the runefather utterly.
Vrindum’s focus narrowed to the single point of Beregthor’s peril. Everything else vanished in the rage of battle. He tore into the daemons, and he was a force beyond reckoning. His throat unleashed a continuous cry of rage. His ur-gold sigils were molten with Grimnir’s wrath. The god demanded vengeance. Vrindum was that vengeance incarnate.
He did not see individual foes. The daemons were an undifferentiated mass that presented itself for the slaughter. Darkbane cut through a sea of daemonic flesh. Pink turned blue, blue vanished in sprays of ichor. Horns and blades slashed at him, but whether they hit or not made no difference. He was the fury of war, and no foul thing would stop him from reaching the runefather.
He drew alongside Beregthor, and the proximity of the runefather pulled him back again from complete battle madness. Krasnak had fallen, fighting to the last as his flesh mutated out of control, transforming him into a hill of pulsating scales and crawling parchment. Beregthor had lost his helm. His face and arms were sheathed in his blood, but he fought as if fresh to the battle.
‘Go back!’ Beregthor shouted.
Vrindum cut a pink horror in two, then destroyed the blue daemons before they uttered their first wail.
‘Come with me, runefather!’ he said. ‘You are restored to us! Your honour does not require your sacrifice!’
Beregthor shook his head. He thrust the Keeper of Roads forward through the jaws of a blue horror, exploding the daemon’s head.
‘I cannot return to the gate. If I do, I will bring ruin to us all. But you must. And destroy it.’
Ahead, Kaz’arrath was less than a dozen great strides away.
‘The gate is lost to us,’ said Beregthor. ‘We must take it from the daemons as they took ours in Sibilatus.’
Vrindum hesitated.
‘Go!’ Beregthor roared. ‘Your runefather commands it!’
With an agonised cry, Vrindum abandoned Beregthor. He turned back. Once more he cut his way through the daemonic horde. Wrath fused with grief. He would have tried to destroy every daemon in the field if not for Beregthor’s desperate order. Several fyrds of vulkite berzerkers were pushing hard to reach the runefather too, and it was not long before Vrindum was in their midst.
‘The gate!’ he said. ‘We are commanded to destroy the gate!’
He leapt onto the platform. He raced to the right-hand pillar, thinking only of his duty and not the consequences as he swung Darkbane. With the first blow, a chunk of ancient stone went flying. The vision in the portal shook. And a roar of denial and rage went up across the battlefield.
The daemons surged forward, and there was no laughter from the pink horrors now. They howled with desperation. They fell on the Fyreslayers with determination, forcing them back. The Drunbhor were suddenly on the defensive, fighting to keep the daemons from reaching the dais.
‘Think you to escape destiny?’
The voice was magisterial and filled with venom. Vrindum’s mouth flooded with blood.
‘The book is written. All change is ours. For you there is but the completion of your task,’ Kaz’arrath said. The daemon reached down and grasped Beregthor in a huge claw. It spread its wings, beat the air with them and rose above the fray, moving towards the dais. As it did, it struck downward with its staff, and Fyreslayers by the score died, their bodies twisted into the shape of unholy runes.
‘Destroy the gate!’ Beregthor’s cry was monstrous in its pain, a soul making its last stand in terrible combat.
Vrindum renewed his attack on the pillar. Stone flew. The wards blazed in anger, but he was not attempting to cross the threshold. Frethnir and Bramnor joined him. Their blows eroded the strength of the pillars.
‘Faster!’ Vrindum shouted. ‘We must end our failures here!’ Kaz’arrath descended on the dais. With a contemptuous gesture, the daemon swept aside the berzerkers who blocked its way. It held Beregthor towards the portal. It could ward the gate and twist its nature, but it could not open it. The runefather of the Drunbhor alone could do that. His body trembling, controlled by a will much greater than his, Beregthor raised the Keeper of the Roads and inserted its blade into the floating keyhole.
Vrindum attacked the pillar with the frenzy of wrath.
Beregthor turned the key.
The circumference of the portal blazed with lightning. The vision of the magmahold took on depth. The keyhole vanished. With a raucous caw of triumph, still clutching the victim of its manipulations, the Lord of Change stepped forward into the gate.
And the pillar collapsed.
It toppled like a felled tree, pulling the entire arch of the gate down with it. Runic, warded stonework fell into the portal with the daemon and Beregthor only partway through. The gate exploded. The heart of the Typhornas Mountains flashed with searing violet and silver. The dais erupted.
Vrindum hurtled through a maelstrom of fire and stone and raging power. The storm raged, and he raged with it. The fury of reality’s ending battered him.
He bellowed a cry of victory and grief.
VII
The destruction of the gate turned the centre of the bowl into a crater. The blast killed many Drunbhor. The uncontrolled storm of sorcerous energies wreaked even greater devastation on the daemons. With Kaz’arrath gone, they were leaderless and despairing. With Beregthor dead, the F
yreslayers were terrible in their vengeance.
The end came quickly.
At dawn, Vrindum stood at the edge of the crater. The wind blowing from the Typhornas Mountains had shaken free of the three-note refrain. The song was changeable once again, varying with every rise and fall of the mountains. It sounded in Vrindum’s ears like a chant of mourning. But perhaps there was a thread of triumph too. Beregthor’s final command had defeated the daemon’s machinations. And he left behind a legacy.
As the sun’s rays crossed the lip of the bowl, the veins of gold in the crater gleamed.
Frethnir joined Vrindum. ‘The runemaster says there is a rich concentration of ur-gold below,’ he said.
‘Beregthor would be pleased,’ said Vrindum. ‘He led us well until the end.’
‘He did. I should never have doubted.’
Vrindum bent down and picked up the Keeper of Roads. It had survived the explosion, though its blade was gravely scarred. Vrindum presented it to Frethnir.
The runeson shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘That is for Bramnor. It is not for me to be auric runefather of the Drunbhor. My brother will lead the march back. I will stay here with those who choose to join me. We will found a new lodge where our father has brought us.’
‘Then I will be of your number,’ Vrindum said. Where the daemon had sought to bring ruin to the Drunbhor, now there would be a greater strength.
The wind’s cry grew louder, a martial song for the birth of a new era.
I
The storm began at the height of the Ritual of Grimnir’s Binding. From where they stood on the platform of rock high on the flank of the Forgecrag, both Thrumnor and Rhulmok saw it start. It stabbed deep into their awareness, drawing them from the necessary trance of the ritual.
The Krelstrag lodge stood strong in the largest volcanic isle at the heart of the Earthwound archipelago in Aqshy. Here, the Fyreslayers said, one of Grimnir’s blades had cut into the ground as he had landed a great blow on Vulcatrix, the Mother of Salamanders. The molten blood of the great wyrm had poured into the vast cleft. The wound in the continents was a hundred leagues wide and many times as long, and it gaped and bled, never to be healed. An ocean of magma raged at the surface. It was said that the ocean had no true bottom, that the wound was so profound it tore through the barriers between the realms, but no living soul could survive the plunge through the depths of that terrible heat to find out.
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