by Luke Scull
The head of the hooded figure was resting on its chest. As Kayne crept closer, the head lifted slightly. The motion was tortuously slow, as if even that simple act took a monumental effort. ‘Greetings, Sword of the North,’ said a rasping, paper-thin voice. It was the antithesis of the voice Kayne knew so well, the booming baritone of the man he had served for over a score years. But something in that pitiful utterance stirred old memories, and he knew beyond doubt that it belonged to the Shaman.
Kayne spun back to Carn Bloodfist, a hundred questions on his lips. The hulking chieftain merely shook his head. ‘He grows weaker by the day. Krazka used some hellish weapon to inflict a wound that refuses to heal. We thought him immortal, but all things die.’
Kayne stared at the hooded figure, his face hidden behind the cowl. He had once thought the Shaman a god, or the closest thing to a god that could still be found in the world. Now he could have simply reached out and snapped the Magelord in half. For all his dreams of vengeance against his former master, for all the fury that had given him purpose over the last few years, the realization unsettled him.
The world never stops changing.
‘I swore an oath,’ Carn said then, abruptly. ‘I mean to see it fulfilled. But I also swore a second oath. I have difficulty deciding which is the greater.’
‘What was this second oath?’ Kayne asked quietly, though he reckoned he knew.
The chieftain’s great fist clenched and he slammed it down onto the makeshift table. The crate cracked beneath the impact. ‘To mount Krazka’s head on a spike above Heartstone’s walls. To drive the demons that now infest our land back to the Borderland.’
Kayne nodded, took a deep breath. This was the opportunity he’d been waiting for. ‘Got a promise of my own to keep,’ he said slowly. ‘To keep, or die trying.’
Carn gave him a knowing look, dark eyes glittering. ‘Your son still lives. Krazka placed him in a wicker cage at the summit of the Great Lodge, a warning to those who might seek to cross him. The Butcher King is fond of spectacle... as my people learned only too well fourteen years ago.’
Kayne grimaced. It all came back to that fateful day. ‘I can’t change what’s done,’ he said slowly. ‘But I can offer my sword in the fight to come. Figure you need all the help you can get.’
The chieftain of the West Reaching turned Oathkeeper over in his hands, as if seeking an answer to the unspoken question in the runes etched into the blade. The silence stretched out, the tension so thick Kayne fancied he could reach out and touch it. Until finally Carn grunted. ‘We move on the gates at dawn,’ he announced. He got up and opened his travel chest, began searching for something within. ‘The battle for Heartstone will be as bloody as any ever fought in the High Fangs. Krazka commands demons. Heartstone’s circle of sorceresses wields magic mightier than that of my own, for most were slain by the Butcher’s Kingsmen the day the Shaman fell. Perhaps a legendary killer such as the Sword of the North can swing the balance in our favour.’
‘I hope I can,’ Kayne said evenly, though the other man’s words hardly filled him with satisfaction. He didn’t want to be a legendary anything any more. Only a decent husband and father, if the spirits would give him the chance.
Carn hardly seemed to hear him. ‘I mean to keep one oath,’ the chieftain rumbled. He’d obtained a whetstone from within the chest and ran it down the edge of his rune-etched broadsword, the steel shrieking like a host of doomed souls screaming for justice. ‘And afterwards, I mean to keep another.’
*
The snow had finally stopped falling by the time Kayne found somewhere to unpack his bedroll and set it down on the bitter earth. There were near ten thousand men in the great camp that had been erected west of Heartstone and he could feel the hostile eyes boring into him. Not a few of his new allies might have relished sticking a blade in Kayne in the middle of the night if the opportunity arose, but Carn had placed a guard to watch over him. Kayne gave the fellow a polite nod as he settled down to build a fire. The guard spat, then fumbled with his breeches and relieved himself, yellow piss steaming as it splashed onto the snow.
Wish it were that easy for all of us, Kayne thought glumly. His own bladder had been stubborner than an angry she-bear for days now. It had made the ride up from the Green Reaching a hellish one. It certainly wouldn’t have done much for his reputation if the warriors huddled around the forest of campfires knew how much it hurt him just to take a piss. There was a lesson in there somewhere, but he was damned if he knew what it was.
He stared eastwards. The approach to the capital was lost to the night now. His first instinct upon arriving in the King’s Reaching had been to stroll right up to Heartstone’s gates and cut down any man standing between him and his son, but that would’ve ended with him pricked full of arrows and if his advancing years had done him any favours at all, they were tempering his recklessness at least a little. Come the morning he would march with Carn Bloodfist’s great host and play what part he could in liberating the city from a tyrant. Seemed he’d been doing that an awful lot lately, but something else age had taught him was that rotten bastards sprang up as fast as weeds in an untended garden.
As he did every night, Kayne carefully unpacked the knife he’d made for his son’s fourteenth naming day. Magnar needed him, now more than ever. He had a promise to keep. A promise to himself and a promise to Mhaira.
He brought to his lips the silver wedding band she’d given him. Once his son was safe he would race back south on the nearest available horse, find the woman he loved and take her in his arms. All he had standing in his way was a fortified town bristling with armed defenders, a horde of demons and a one-eyed lunatic wielding a Magelord-slaying weapon. That and a man-mountain of a chieftain bearing a grudge and a magic sword, who commanded the largest army ever assembled in the Fangs.
It don’t get any easier.
Truth was he could’ve used a friend right then. But the friends he had were all either dead or his friends no longer. The world changed and it left everything in ruins. Even bonds he once thought could never be broken.
He awoke briefly in the middle of the night. The embers in the fire-pit were still warm, and he shifted a little to get closer to their lingering heat. For a moment he had an intense sensation of being watched. Not by the men slumbering nearby, but by something else. Something that made the hairs on his arms stand on end.
Nerves, he told himself. They always struck before a fight, and in a few hours he would walk straight into the biggest fight of his life. He closed his eyes and sank into a fitful sleep. Images of his son locked in a cage tormented his dreams. Apparitions of fire and shadow and ash stalked his nightmares. Until everything faded, leaving only a former friend, a brother, to stare out from a black pit, eyes burning with the pain of betrayal. Then that accusatory gaze dwindled away too, until Kayne awoke at last, drenched in sweat and his own eyes glistening with tears.
No Limits
✥
KRAZKA YAWNED, STRETCHED, and then rolled over on the bed. He lifted an arm and placed it lazily on the figure beside him, absently stroked his lover’s back. The flesh felt cool, in stark contrast to the endless burning in his face where the Shaman’s fist had half torn it off. He’d grown to enjoy the barely concealed horror in the eyes of his subjects when they saw the shattered hollow of his cheek, the ear half hanging off his head. He even took a twisted pleasure in the throbbing agony. It reminded him he was alive.
After all, only the dead felt no pain.
The room was still dim, the single candle lighting the king’s chamber casting only a meagre light into the grey gloom. Krazka always woke with the dawn: this was his favourite hour, the silent stillness before the sun bathed the world in fire and noise. The dawn was ripe with potency; in its heady embrace a man could dream that he might achieve anything, be anything.
Reach for the stars.
He dreamed of his mother often. Remembered her voice when the weight of the world began to wear on his shoulder
s and he needed a little encouragement to keep him on the path right and true.
Reach for the stars.
He sneered and his grip tightened on his bedmate’s shoulder, his nails digging into skin. Of course, his old ma had never told him to reach for the stars. Only words he ever remembered uttered by the whore who had spilled him into the world were those she’d left him with as she let go of his feet and turned away.
I don’t love you. I’m sorry, I just don’t love you. Hard words for any babe to hear, not made any sweeter when it was his third naming day and he’d just been dropped head-first into a cesspit no less than twice a man’s height and that was before you counted the huge stinking mound of shit at the bottom.
He hadn’t cared about revenge at the time. That’d come after. But even then, barely able to walk even without taking into account the fractured leg he’d suffered in the fall, he knew that he had to climb up. To keep on reaching if he wanted to survive. So that’s what he’d done, until he emerged from the pit three days later, covered in filth and looking like a demon crawled out of the abyss. Still, all that was the past. The future was what mattered now – and it belonged to him.
Reach for the stars. He heard the Herald’s voice in his skull again, the hint of amusement in the demon lord’s words, as if they held a double meaning, some joke only it was privy to. Krazka wasn’t fond of anyone making jokes at his expense, but he figured a twenty-feet-tall fiend with razor claws and fangs could be excused. If only the Herald would hurry its scaly arse back to Heartstone and bring a horde of its kin with it, the situation with the three armies surrounding his city would look a good deal less vexing.
He yawned again, then gave the unresponsive figure beside him a shake. He stopped when he suddenly recalled the climax of last night’s entertainment. ‘On second thoughts, I’ll let you rest,’ he said wryly.
He turned the shake into a fierce shove and the corpse tumbled out of the bed. Lifeless limbs flopped around the man, whose head settled at an awkward angle, arched up to reveal the bright red maw in his throat. His dead eyes were still wide with shock. Krazka chuckled at that. ‘They call me the Butcher King,’ he murmured. ‘What did you expect?’
He rolled from the bed and stepped around the body to retrieve his clothes, pleased to see they were unsullied by the blood glistening on the old wooden floorboards. He got dressed, threw the great white cloak made from the pelt of the Highland cat he had killed over his shoulders and fastened the clasp. The huge cat had ambushed him in a mountain pass many years ago. He’d ended its life armed with nothing but a pocketknife, though the fight had cost him an eye. You didn’t take much out this world without giving a little in return.
He strapped on his sword belt, pausing a moment to draw the single-edged blade from the scabbard and admire the perfect balance. Demonsteel – or abyssium, as the Herald had named the metal from which it was forged. It could be found nowhere in the earth, for according to the Herald abyssium did not belong to this world. With it, no magic could harm Krazka. Carn’s sorceresses had learned that lesson the hard way. The Shaman too, though it was a different, even more dangerous weapon that had done for their erstwhile Magelord.
Krazka reached down to the opposite side of his belt and caressed the hilt of the deadly tool holstered there. Then he rubbed his blind left eye with the back of his hand, wiping away the film of mucus that always formed during the night. Most would consider losing the sight in one eye to be a disadvantage, but Krazka found that it helped him focus. Helped him see through the web of a thousand lies men and women alike spun to fool themselves into believing the world was a better place than they knew to be true. That they were better than their actions said they were; that all the jealousy, all the cheating, and all the hypocrisy they despised in others was somehow justified in their own twisted little selves.
Krazka had no time for such deceits. He wielded only the truth with all its sharp edges, and if anyone had a problem with that they need only dig up the mountain of corpses he’d left at Beregund and Reaver’s Gate and ask ’em why that might not be such a wise idea.
There was a clumsy knock on the door of the bedchamber and it creaked open. The giant bleached skull of a bear began to emerge into the room, but it was too wide for the gap and got wedged between the door and the frame.
‘I’m stuck,’ rumbled the deep voice of Bagha from beneath the skull. Krazka’s eye narrowed and he idly considered drawing his sword and ridding himself of his lumbering oaf of a Kingsman once and for all. But the huge Lakeman had at least proved loyal to him. There was something to be said for loyalty after Wulgreth and the self-proclaimed knight Sir Meredith had upped and disappeared. Not to mention Shranree, his senior sorceress.
With a sigh, Krazka sauntered over to the door and removed the jamb. The door banged open and Bagha stumbled into the room clutching his ridiculous war mace in his ham-like fists.
‘First things first, bearface,’ said Krazka patiently. ‘You knock before you enter the king’s chambers. Second, when it comes to keeping a watch out for those who might mean me harm, wearing a fucking great bear skull over half your face don’t strike me as perspicacious.’
‘I don’t know what that word means,’ Bagha replied slowly. ‘But if you want me to take this off, that’s all right with me, boss.’
‘If any other man dared call me “boss” instead of “my king” I’d see him lose his tongue,’ Krazka said brightly. ‘But seeing as you’ve got shit for brains I’ll let it pass. Case you forgot, I crowned myself King of the High Fangs months ago.’
Bagha reached up to remove the skull covering his head. Then he took a step back and stumbled over the body beside the bed. There was a crack as four hundred pounds of hulking Highlander and a hundred pounds of iron war mace hammered into the wooden frame. The giant oaf climbed slowly back to his feet and stared down at the bed, which now sagged heavily on one side. ‘Sorry,’ he rumbled.
Krazka sighed and pointed down at the corpse. ‘I’m gonna go take a walk. Get rid of that.’
Bagha stared at the naked body. His small eyes narrowed beneath his brutish brow.
‘Something the matter?’ Krazka asked.
‘Why’s he got no clothes on?’
‘Why do people usually not got clothes on? Most times it’s because they’re bathing, fucking or lying in a hole in the ground. Maybe you could help expedite the latter instead of looming there like the unholy spawn of a she-bear and a tree trunk.’
Even a mind as ponderous as the huge Kingsman’s couldn’t fail to put the pieces together. ‘Ain’t right for two men to lay together,’ he rumbled.
Krazka grinned. ‘You got a man with his throat opened up bleeding out over the floor... and that’s what’s troubling you?’
‘It’s against the Code,’ Bagha muttered, staring down at his huge feet.
Krazka’s grin faded. ‘The Code’s dead,’ he snarled. ‘These are the new times. The old rules don’t apply any more, not that they ever applied to yours truly in the first place. I fuck who I want. Fact is, man or woman, it’s all just flesh to be used. Used and then tossed away.’
If a nefarious former outlaw like Bagha – a man who often spoke casually of how he had murdered his own wife – could look uncomfortable at talk of killing, the hulking Kingsman managed it just then.
*
The cold no longer bothered Krazka. Since his bargain with the Herald thirteen years ago – shortly after the massacre at Reaver’s Gate – the self-styled Butcher King found himself unaffected by the extremes of both the harshest winter nights and the hottest summer days. His fortieth year had been and gone, but as he marched along the battlements running the perimeter of Heartstone’s great wooden palisades Krazka felt stronger than ever. The Herald had told him he would retain the vitality of a man half his age for the rest of his life: one of the many gifts the demon lord’s mysterious master, the Nameless, had bestowed upon the one-time chieftain of the Lake Reaching.
Krazka’s lone eye swept
the snow-covered hills to the west, where Carn Bloodfist’s host was encamped. After weeks of skirmishing in the Heartlands, the civil war tearing the High Fangs apart would finally converge on the capital and the fate of the country would be decided. The chieftain of the West Reaching and his vast army would fall upon Heartstone’s walls in a great tide. When they did, Krazka intended to be ready.
He had ordered archers posted on the battlements. They bowed as he passed them, though few dared meet his gaze. In truth they hated him almost as much as they feared him, but so long as they did what they were told Krazka cared not. Reasons had never interested him so much as results. Men liked to rationalize their decisions in a thousand different ways, but in his experience the world functioned much the same when you ignored the ‘why’ and focused only on the outcome.
At regular intervals along the western palisade were hung huge iron cauldrons cast by the smithies at the Foundry. They were suspended over large braziers by chains connected to winches. As soon as Krazka gave the order, the cauldrons would be filled with oil and the braziers lit. The defenders on the battlements would then hoist the cauldrons up to the walls and rain boiling black death down on those on the other side. It was a nasty way to die, though Krazka could think of worse.
I been blessed with a vivid imagination in that regard. He reached his destination and stared up at the wicker cage swinging from the gallows above the west gate. He couldn’t claim the credit for that particular implement; the Shaman had devised it. The occupant was slumped as far as the prison’s wicked design would allow, his body locked in perpetual discomfort. He’d been a hearty young man only three months back; now the former king of the High Fangs looked as frail as someone thrice his years.