Broken Stone 02 - Warlock's Sun Rising

by Damien Black

  ‘OLDRIK!’ he bellowed again, so he could be heard above the crackling of burning boats and the clash of arms. ‘It’s OVER! I outnumber thee two to one! Step forwards and kneel, and I shall spare your life. The Magnate of the Frozen Wastes commands it!’

  Silence greeted his surly challenge. Guldebrand felt his men shifting tetchily behind him as the rest of his forces finished taking up position.

  ‘I’ve three leidangs to your one,’ said Guldebrand. ‘Even now my allies subdue your jarls. You can’t win this fight.’ He knew from Ragnar’s report that another force loyal to Oldrik would be hastening towards the city from the south. But by the time it reached the burning walls of Landarök the battle would be over.

  He knew it, Oldrik knew it.

  After another awkward silence a gap appeared in the shieldwall. Through it stepped a tall, lean man, with dark wiry hair and a scar that ran from his right eye down his cheek before disappearing into his mustachios. At five and forty winters, Oldrik Stormrider was haler than many a man of advancing years. He was dressed in boiled leathers and furs of ermine, and many gold rings decorated his brawny arms. Despite the situation he moved with a grace and confidence borne of years of command. Across his back were two single-headed axes. Hjalmbitr and Lindbrotna, men had nicknamed them, the Helm-biter and Shield-breaker. Together they were known as the Twin Furies.

  ‘Guldebrand the Beardless,’ he said flatly, in a voice that betrayed no emotion. ‘You have presumed to bring the blood ember to my city, engirdling it with bane of wood. Weather of weapons has turned its headwinds against me. I crave only a flame farewell.’

  Guldebrand took in a breath of air made warm and dusty by the burning of ships. The Stormrider’s meaning was unmistakable.

  ‘An honourable death you shall have, by my troth!’ he roared. ‘Single combat it is then! Logi’s seed and spoil of the sword to the victor – battle sweat and sleep of the axe to him that loses!’

  ‘My lord, do not this thing!’ growled Brega behind him. ‘The Stormrider’s prowess is legendary – we have not seen a breaker of rings his like since Hrolf reigned as Magnate!’

  King Hrolf was exactly who Guldebrand was trying to follow. ‘Two hundred years have passed since Hrolf tasted the sleep of the sword and the last Ice Kingdom fell,’ he declaimed loudly so everyone could hear. ‘Fitting then that his successor should slay the man judged his equal!’

  Gasps went up on either side at that. Though his victories were remarkable, few would say Guldebrand had proven himself equal to the great heroes of old. Today he would change that forever.

  ‘Come now,’ he said, stepping forwards and limbering up. ‘Let us decide this.’

  Oldrik gave a compliant grin as he stepped into the space between warbands, unslinging the Twin Furies in one fluid motion and whirling them around for good measure.

  Guldebrand stopped moving and crouched in a fighting stance, sword and shield stock still as he waited for his antagonist to attack.

  Once again he was up against a superior opponent. Only this time it was no first-blood fight, but a death-duel of honour to decide who would rule. His mind flashed back briefly to his last conversation with Ragnar, the night before they had arrived to storm Landarök. The White Eye had offered to daub his body with strange marks in the language sorcerers used, marks that would make him as impervious to blade and blow as the ocean itself. Guldebrand had refused. How could he trust a banished Left-Hand warlock to lay such magick on him? He would not be controlled so easily.

  As Oldrik circled around him, he wondered briefly if that had been the right choice. Perhaps giving up a sure victory by force of numbers was a mistake… but something deep in his marrow told him this was his day.

  He did not doubt that even as the Stormrider launched his first devastating attack.

  Guldebrand stepped back as two whirlwinds of steel whistled about him, searching for a gap in his defences. Guldebrand offered none. Blow for blow he met the Stormrider, answering Helmbiter and Shieldbreaker with his sword and target; an unearthly speed and strength seemed to possess him, a cold battle-fury that channelled berserker rage with none of its recklessness. Oldrik’s stoical features allowed a flicker of surprise as his youthful antagonist matched his striking, parrying and riposting again and again before launching a counter attack of his own.

  No cheers went up from either side: a death duel to decide the outcome of a war was met with grim silence. No wagers would be made on the outcome of this fight. None but the fate of a future kingdom.

  Of all this Guldebrand thought little as he felt his body move with a lithe swiftness seemingly of its own accord. He felt rather than saw his feet move in perfect time to Oldrik’s; he sensed rather than heard the clang of steel on steel and the thunk of blade on oak as his notched sword and ravaged shield saved him from one lethal blow after another. He seemed only to see his foeman’s eyes now, dark pits surrounded by two swirling vortices it was his destiny to still forever.

  A whining screech. Shieldbreaker buried itself in the rim of his target and stayed lodged there. A split second later and he caught Helmbiter’s haft in the guard of his sword. The two men stayed locked together like that for a split second… did he see or sense a raven as it fluttered overhead? Whose doom would it pronounce?

  With a roar Guldebrand lashed out with his foot, catching the Thegn square in the midriff. Oldrik huffed and doubled up as the wind went out of him. As he did, Guldebrand made two outwards circular motions with his arms. An incredible strength seemed to possess them; the Twin Furies were prised remorselessly from Oldrik’s grasp as he fell to the ground.

  Guldebrand stood over him, breathing heavily. He felt a presence at his back: in his mind’s eye he saw Hela, Queen of the Dead, spread her dark wings across them both. Shieldbreaker remained buried in the rim of his target, which was one blow away from being splintered into fragments; Helmbiter lay on the ground where it had fallen.

  Calmly he dropped his sword and pulled Shieldbreaker free of the mangled target, letting it slip off his arm. Without taking his eyes off his opponent he bent to pick up Helmbiter. The axes felt smooth and well-balanced in his hands. Some said both blades had been inscribed with the Sorcerer’s Script to give them more puissance, but Guldebrand paid no heed to such tales.

  Oldrik had recovered enough to pull himself upright, though he was still winded from the kick, which might have come from an angry stallion. With a dismissive air Guldebrand kicked his sword over to the Thegn of Gautlund.

  ‘Pick up my sword. Let’s finish this like made men.’

  The words sounded as if they were coming from somewhere else. Oldrik obeyed, though he still moved gingerly.

  ‘Recover your breath. I’ll give you a flame farewell as befits a warrior of your station.’ Guldebrand couldn’t even say for sure if it was him speaking. He felt as though the blood pumping through his veins was flowing outside his skin, drowning his body in a cascading torrent of battle sweat.

  At last Oldrik jerked himself upright, falling back into a fighting stance as he clutched the sword Guldebrand had given him. No fear was in his eyes, only a look of resignation.

  Guldebrand lopped off half the hand that held the sword at the first pass. A second swipe from the other axe clove deep into Oldrik’s hip. Guldebrand yanked the blade free, and Oldrik gasped as he slumped to the dark earth, his lifeblood seeping down towards the hungry worms that called it home.

  Through the roaring in his ears Guldebrand was aware that his foe had conveniently fallen into a kneeling position. Gently he rested Shieldbreaker and Helmbiter to either side of Oldrik’s neck. The erstwhile Thegn of Gautlund looked up at him with glazed eyes that no longer looked upon Middangeard, but quested for the Halls of Feasting and Fighting.

  Raising both the axes high above his head, Guldebrand screamed primally as he brought them back down to exactly where they had been a second ago. Oldrik’s head shot off his body, a wedge-shaped portion of his neck following it on a tide of gore.


  A great groan went up from behind the shield wall. A few moments later dull thunks and clattering followed as the Stormrider’s leidang disarmed.

  ‘It is over,’ said Guldebrand in a weary voice. ‘Secure the harbour and take these warriors prisoner. None are to be harmed or mistreated.’

  Turning around to check his orders were being followed, he wasn’t entirely surprised to see Ragnar, an inscrutable smile playing on his lips. As always in those situations he felt distinctly uneasy, but he was too tired and jubilant to care.

  He nodded towards the regal corpse he had just made. ‘Have a funeral pyre built, I want him cremated with full honours. He earned his flame farewell.’

  Ragnar nodded and sloped off to do his bidding. Guldebrand’s strange battle rage was ebbing out of him and he felt exhausted. Still clutching the Twin Furies he surveyed the burning city he had won. With news of the Stormrider’s death in single combat his jarls would have to surrender; Magnhilda and Canute would bring any dissenters to a bloody heel.

  He could taste Oldrik’s blood where it had sprayed across his face and lips, could smell its delicious tang in his nostrils. That gave him a bit of strength he needed. Raising his eyes to the firmament he laughed.

  As if on cue, Brega cried: ‘All hail Guldebrand Stormbreaker, magnate-in-waiting of the Frozen Wastes!’

  Guldebrand shut his eyes and exulted as hundreds of men called him by his new name. The beardless boy had become a king.

  CHAPTER VII

  Where Dead Kings Walk

  By the time Horskram took the company off the road Volfburg lay a dozen miles behind; apart from the odd trader and vagabond they had seen no one else. Another couple of hours saw them riding hard through fields and orchards, giving the hamlets and manor houses they passed a wide berth, before the adept finally called a halt.

  Adelko groaned as he eased himself off his horse. He was feeding him some oats when Vaskrian wandered over.

  ‘So – another madcap mission with the legendary friar Horskram,’ he said. ‘And what fell dangers is the good Argolian leading us into this time, eh?’

  The novice grimaced, and not because of the stale well water he sipped from his gourd.

  ‘If only you knew how appropriate your gallows humour is,’ he sighed. His mentor had told him what to expect in the Draugmoors when they’d stopped to navigate another potholed stretch of road, although he’d been chary of letting the others know. But that was typical of the secretive old monk.

  Vaskrian shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve been scarred by witch-fire and lost two guvnors to war and quest – and nearly a third to boot for the sake of a woman,’ he said, a queer light entering his eyes. ‘Whatever’s coming next, I’m ready for it!’

  Adelko sized his friend up. Maybe he really was, come to think of it. The squire had always looked tough enough, but when they’d met there had been a rawness to him that wasn’t there now. Scarred and trussed up in a sling, it was more than the physical injuries he’d sustained: there was a darkness to his mien that hadn’t been there before.

  ‘You know what?’ he handed Vaskrian the gourd. ‘I actually believe you.’

  The squire was about to reply when Horskram interrupted them. ‘Five minutes,’ he barked. ‘Then we’re back in the saddle again.’

  ‘He still likes to let everyone know who’s in charge,’ muttered Vaskrian, taking a swig and handing back the gourd.

  ‘That’s Master Horskram for you,’ grinned Adelko. ‘Wouldn’t be the same any other way.’

  As they neared the moorlands, Adelko reflected on what Horskram had told him. There had only been time for snatched conversation as they steered their horses through another ruined patch of road, but he’d gleaned enough to know the Draugmoors weren’t much safer than Tintagael.

  ‘They were corrupted as Tintagael was by the presence of one of the Elder Wizards’ watchtowers,’ his mentor had told him. ‘The Codices of Zhorrah kept by the priest caste of Sendhé tell of a myriad such edifices, dotted about Urovia and Sassania. This one must have watched over all of Vorstlund, before the Breaking of the World when its lands were called by another name long forgotten.’

  The Sendhéan texts Horskram quoted spoke of ancient burial mounds of warrior-kings who had served the Elder Wizards as vassals. ‘Whether they were of a lineage predating the Elder Wizards, or of the Varyan race itself or a mixture of the two, is not known,’ the adept had continued. ‘But what the sages do agree upon is that the sorceries of the Witch Kings gradually polluted the moorlands about the tower as they gave themselves up to the worship of Abaddon. After Ma’amun’s attempt to summon him brought down the Breaking, a great silence fell upon those lands as the First Age of Darkness swept across the realms they had once ruled.’

  But during those thousand years, things in the barrows had stirred.

  ‘What kind of things?’ asked Adelko. ‘You mean Gaunts?’ A shiver tickled his spine as he recalled his own encounter with the dreadful ghost in Tintagael.

  ‘In a manner of speaking, only much more dangerous and malign,’ replied Horskram. ‘In truth we don’t know enough about them. Written accounts of the Draugmoors are in short supply. You see, the wildernesses of Gothia – the old name given to the southern reaches of Vorstlund – were never civilised until King Aslun the Younger undertook a great clearing project some five hundred years ago, cutting down the forests to make room for arable land. Until then not even the Thalamians could subjugate it, and the fate of the Great Lost Legion is well documented by Ibid, the Empire’s greatest historian and loremaster.’

  Adelko nodded as they picked their way through a muddy bog that had eaten up the road. He had read Ibid’s account of the disastrous expedition from Tyrannos some three hundred years before the coming of Palom. It had cemented once and for all a political certainty: the Thalamian Empire met its northern limit at the Orne Ranges.

  ‘In those days the Breitrand covered most of Gothia, and as well as the barbarian tribes it was the haunt of Fays and Wadwos,’ his mentor went on. ‘Most scholars including Ibid believe that it was here that the Lost Legion met its end. But some sages claim that a portion of it survived their depredations… pushing farther north, the surviving legionnaires came upon a ghastly moorland, topped by a broken tower. And having survived the Faerie Kindred and the beastfolk, the remaining soldiers fled into the moorlands, only to succumb to tall grey-faced kings who stank of the grave and wielded great swords of black iron… All but one, who fled back into the forest. Somehow he made his way back south, the legend goes, persuading a barbarian chieftain to give him safe conduct back to the Empire.’

  ‘Why would the Gothians spare his life?’ asked Adelko.

  ‘According to the same legend, the legionnaire promised to spread tales of the terrors beyond the Orne Ranges, to discourage any further attempts at conquest. And thus he did upon his return to Tyrannos, according to written records cited by loremasters. And of all the half-mad soldier’s tales, none were more frightening than those of what he had witnessed on the Draugmoors.’

  ‘Cheering to know you’re leading us by another safe path, Master Horskram,’ said Adelko wryly.

  ‘The blood of the Redeemer should be enough to protect us,’ replied Horskram, though the novice wasn’t completely reassured. ‘The rest of what we know about the Draugmoors comes from the usual fireside tales, handed down from mother to child in the wildernesses of Vorstlund, and few dare venture there nowadays. The last folk known to do so were adventurers who lived in the time of Aethel, last of the House of Bede, in the days when Vorstlund was a united kingdom. They sought the fabled treasures thought to lie in the watchtower and the barrow mounds of the Draug Kings. The King’s Annals begun by Eadred the Learned some two centuries before that chronicle the old kingdom’s history and include their tale. Of the original party only two freebooters returned. One of them had his mind broken forever by his ordeal, the other withered away from a strange sickness and never revealed what he had seen.’


  ‘That doesn’t sound encouraging, Master Horskram,’ sighed Adelko.

  Horskram favoured his novice with a sardonic smile. ‘I have led you into many situations that were not encouraging,’ he said. ‘Yet here we are, another step closer to Rima.’

  ‘Another muddy step,’ moaned Adelko as his horse splashed through the pool. At least the mud didn’t show up on his brown habit.

  ‘Not many more of those, I trow,’ said Horskram. ‘Look, firm road up yonder! Time to kick our nags into a gallop and put some more leagues between us and our pursuers.’

  ‘I thought you said the Lanraks probably won’t try to pursue us any further?’ asked Adelko.

  ‘The Lanraks, no,’ replied the monk. ‘They’re on thin ice as it is, chasing us through hostile territory. It’s the knights from Turstein I’m worried about. When the Ostveldings tell them who we are they’ll chase us through the entire eorldom if it means a chance of capturing Wilhelm’s daughter. Taking us through the Draugmoors is our best chance of getting out of Upper Thulia.’

  They had struck up a gallop after that and not spoken since, leaving Adelko to wonder if hostile knights were really more dangerous than what lay ahead.

  That was a question Adelko would soon have answered. As grey dells wreathed in mist steadily encroached against the pale horizon, he steeled himself for yet another test of his psychic fortitude. As with the trees of Tintagael, the eldritch moorlands seemed to draw the light from the skies into them, suffusing the hills and valleys with an unearthly sheen. As they drew closer to the Draugmoors he felt rather than heard the ghostly voices pushing at the penumbra of his sixth sense. They were different from those he had experienced in the cursed forest, less numerous but more malignant.

  Something occurred to him. ‘When we were in the Warlock’s Crown, it felt evil but I didn’t hear so many… entities,’ he said to Horskram as they stopped for one final rest before entering the moorlands. ‘Why is that?’