Dead Man's Steel

by Luke Scull

  If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you. There’d never been a man truer to his word than Jerek. Not even Carn.

  He left the fighting at the gate behind him, made his way east along the wide dirt road that ran through Heartstone. Memories came flooding back: old streets he had walked a hundred times before in his younger years; the smoky smell of the Foundry. Far ahead of him the hulking edifice of the Great Lodge loomed in the centre of town. It seemed the most likely place to search for Magnar so he headed towards it, hoping beyond hope that he wasn’t too late.

  A moment later a trio of sorceresses rounded an apothecary shop and almost collided with him.

  Common wisdom had it that a warrior stands no chance against a mage. That magic conquers steel every time. And Kayne reckoned that when it came to the Magelords, that might well be the case. They could kill with a thought. Turn a man inside out in the time it takes them to blink.

  But those who weren’t Magelords, regular wizards and sorceresses – their weapons shared the same weaknesses as everyone else’s. They had to choose their spells. Ready them, target them correctly. Most of all, they required the will to look a man in the eye and take an action that would snuff out his life, and that’s a hard thing when you haven’t ever killed before.

  But he was Brodar Kayne, and for him killing came as easily as breathing.

  He was already launching himself into a roll as a bolt of flame sizzled from the fingertip of the nearest sorceress, by far the quickest to react. It missed him, struck the earth nearby in a minor explosion of flame and dust. He plucked a stone from the ground, launched it and heard the satisfying crack as it dropped her unconscious. The second sorceress watched numbly while her brain attempted to catch up with what was happening. Kayne was on her in an instant, the pommel of his greatsword knocking her senseless. That left the third and final sorceress – and whatever time a man might be able to create for himself in that vital moment between thought and deed, even it had its limits.

  The sorceress whispered a word and instantly Kayne’s body refused to obey him. A creeping paralysis began to take hold, locking his head in place, then running down his arms until his greatsword tumbled from his nerveless fingers. This was the moment where it all ended. Where he died, along with his promise to Mhaira.

  He summoned all his stubbornness. All the anger within him, rage that had been building since he’d learned of his son’s fate south of the Greenwild. He willed himself to act with every screaming fibre of his muscles.

  He shifted slightly. Bumped an arm that felt like a lead weight against his waist and dislodged the knife there. Magnar’s knife, fashioned by Brodar Kayne for his son’s fourteenth naming day. It tumbled towards the ground.

  The paralysis spell had reached his waist now. The tops of his legs. Down, ever down. But not quite far enough.

  He hooked a foot under the knife as it fell. Kicked out. Watched it spin in the air, gleaming from the light of the fires raging through town.

  It hit the sorceress in the throat and stuck there. She choked, her spell broken, and in an instant Kayne was beside her. He grabbed her as she fell, held her close and lowered her gently towards the ground as she died in his arms, suffocating on her own blood. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’ He thought he might have recognized the woman’s face. He remembered her treating Mhaira when his wife was sick.

  He carefully removed the knife from the woman’s throat, and then closed her eyes one final time. He retrieved his greatsword and checked on the other sorceresses to make sure they were breathing. Eyes red from smoke, tiredness and grief, Brodar Kayne continued towards the great edifice at the centre of Heartstone.

  *

  Krazka stood at the summit of the Great Lodge, the highest point in Heartstone, and stared out over town. ‘This is it,’ he said, spreading his palms wide, encompassing the hell playing out on the streets below. ‘Everything I’ve worked so hard for. Everything I’ve lied, murdered and raped for. On the verge of ruin.’

  Beside him loomed the monstrous figure of Bagha, nearly seven feet tall and nearly the intellectual match of a seven-year-old. Dumb though he was, the massive killer was perceptive enough to spot the flaw in Krazka’s argument. ‘You’d have lied, murdered and raped anyway,’ he rumbled.

  ‘Aye. True enough. The rest was a bonus, but I was feeling maudlin.’

  Krazka narrowed his lone eye and surveyed the wreckage of his plans. To the south, Heartstone’s sorceresses were still holding off the army from the Green Reaching. It seemed Brandwyn the Younger was as cowardly as his father, whose head Krazka had made great sport of after he had cut it from his shoulders during the sacking of Beregund. It was west where his troubles lay. The magical assault on the western gate had not materialized; the sorceresses had failed to show. The town’s defenders were being driven back by superior numbers. Very soon the invading army would reach the Great Lodge itself.

  ‘The Herald fucked me,’ he declared bitterly.

  There was a confused moment of silence as Bagha attempted to process this information. ‘Huh. Didn’t know it had a cock. Figure that might hurt. The Herald’s really big.’

  Krazka’s eye narrowed further. ‘That weren’t meant literally, bearface. The Herald was meant to send reinforcements. Hrothgar was supposed to send men, too. Neither delivered. If you can’t trust a demon lord and a blackmailed chieftain, you tell me who I can trust.’

  Bagha pondered this for a moment. ‘Your nana?’ he volunteered.

  I climbed up out of a cesspit with my bare hands, Krazka thought bitterly. I ain’t gonna die here next to shit-for-brains.

  ‘Follow me,’ he barked, storming over to the stairs that led back down to the ground floor. He strode through the throne room and then out through the hall of heroes, where the arms of legendary warriors and Wardens decorated the walls. He kicked open an oak door, grabbed a torch off a sconce on the wall opposite and handed it to Bagha.

  ‘Oil,’ he said, pointing at the huge wooden barrels lining the room. ‘I want you to burn this place down.’

  ‘Burn down the Great Lodge?’ Bagha repeated.

  ‘You know, people might understand me better if I started painting my orders in their blood when they don’t get the message. Aye, I said burn the fucking place down. I need a distraction while I make a break for the east gate. Reckon I’ll lay low in the Lake Reaching for a while until I can start afresh.’

  ‘What about me?’ Bagha asked.

  ‘Come join me when you’re done. Round up Rana and Lanka and his two brothers as well. They might prove useful. I’ll be waiting on the western shore of Lake Dragur.’

  ‘What do I get out of all this?’

  ‘I’ll quadruple your pay.’

  Bagha thought about this for a moment, the ridiculous bear skull atop his head bobbing up and down as he attempted something approximating a calculation. ‘Triple,’ he demanded.

  Krazka blew out his cheeks, then added a wince for good measure. ‘You drive a hard bargain. Triple it is. Out of curiosity, how many men you killed so far today?’

  The giant Lakeman frowned at the gore-splattered war mace resting on his enormous shoulder. ‘I lost count,’ he admitted.

  ‘That figures. Remember, Lake Dragur. Kill anyone who tries to stop you.’ That said, the Butcher King spun on his heels and stalked out of the Great Lodge, cloak billowing behind him, one hand on the hilt of his demonsteel sword, the other on the hand-cannon holstered on his belt. Things hadn’t worked out this time around – but when you fell down, you got back up and started climbing again. He would find more men loyal to him in the Lake Reaching. Seek out a new demon lord, if one existed. Maybe holding the former king of the High Fangs hostage would grant him leverage to parley with the other chieftains and maybe it wouldn’t. It didn’t matter. Life was a vast tapestry of possibilities and he wouldn’t rest until he had rewoven it into his own image, or else burned the whole fucking thing to ash.

  He was almost at the east gate when
the ruined side of his face began to throb. The Herald’s voice suddenly burst into his head, a cacophony of voices howling like a gale inside his skull.

  The Legion comes.

  Nice of you to think of me. Krazka hurled the thought at the demon lord like a spear. It’s too late. Heartstone is lost.

  Heartstone is of no consequence.

  It is to me. A king needs a throne.

  You misunderstand. You have served your purpose. Your people have been destabilized. Weakened. Now the Legion comes.

  Krazka’s eye narrowed. You saying our alliance is ended?

  There was never an alliance. You were a tool to be used and discarded.

  The world turned red. Scarlet. Crimson. ‘You treacherous, scaly motherfucker,’ Krazka snarled aloud. ‘Once this is over I’m coming for you. That’s a promise.’

  The Herald’s voice sounded almost amused. You need not trouble yourself. The seal placed upon us by the Ancients millennia ago is finally broken. The Legion cannot be stopped. The Nameless will have this world. You will be meat. All things will be meat.

  Krazka screamed in fury and tore at his face, where the scarred mass of his cheek was pulsing in time with the howling laughter now tearing through his skull. He stumbled forward. The gate was just ahead.

  ‘Where are you going?’ The powerful figure of Orgrim Foehammer intercepted him. The chieftain of the East Reaching was covered in sweat and blood, the maul he carried in his ham-sized fists red from recent use. ‘You ain’t fleeing what you’ve wrought here, Butcher King. We’ve lost. It’s time to face the music.’

  ‘Out of the way, Foehammer.’

  Orgrim shook his head. ‘I was a fool to throw in with you,’ he said, his voice heavy with despair. ‘Better to have died honestly with my people, defending the Fangs from the demon invasion. I thought you offered a way out.’

  ‘Well now, let that be a lesson. There is only ever one way out.’ Krazka was moving before the words left his lips, his demonsteel sword flashing in the morning sun. Orgrim had been a warrior of great renown once, his fight with the Sword of the North on the banks of the Icemelt years ago the stuff of legend. But now he was old and fat.

  Still, he almost got his hammer up in time. Almost, but not quite. And almost ain’t never been good enough.

  Orgrim stared down at the hole Krazka had just opened in his stomach. Blood flooded out and the Foehammer sank to his knees, the maul after which he was named toppling to the snow with a thud. Outraged shouts split the air and two of the fallen chieftain’s men charged, swords raised. Krazka shot one in the head, his brains exploding out of his skull. The other he cut down in the blink of an eye.

  Then he was through the gates and out onto the road heading east. He only glanced back once after leaving – which was how he spotted the blink demon emerging behind him an instant before it pounced.

  *

  The Great Lodge was a raging inferno.

  Kayne stared numbly at the flames that engulfed the largest building in the High Fangs. There was no sign of Magnar. No sign of anyone except a few corpses littering the ground nearby, their heads smashed in by something large and blunt. Kayne’s own greatsword was dripping red – the fighting had caught up with him on his way to the centre of town. He’d been forced to kill many men. He didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want to think about anything except his son and the promise he’d made Mhaira in the final moment before they’d parted.

  There was movement behind him and he turned. It was Carn Bloodfist. ‘The town is won,’ the chieftain announced. Despite this, his heavy brow was furrowed with concern. ‘I have received troubling news from Mace. The army of the Black Reaching was intercepted north of here. Mace brought five thousand men with him. Less than a thousand still live.’

  ‘How?’ Kayne whispered.

  ‘A horde of demons fell upon them. A horde the likes of which the High Fangs has never seen. Thousands. Tens of thousands. They filled the horizon, a teeming mass large enough to overrun the north.’ Carn turned away and stared out across the city. The fighting had died down; now the survivors were gathering the injured and wounded on both sides. The civil war was over. All thoughts had turned to survival. ‘We must abandon the High Fangs. Every one of the ten Reachings. Only death awaits those who remain.’

  ‘Abandon our home? Where will we go?’ Kayne’s voice was heavy with disbelief. Thick with despair.

  ‘The only place we can go. The Lowlands.’

  Kayne squeezed his eyes shut. It seemed history had a habit of repeating itself. The southern Seer, Shara, had told him he was a marker in the Pattern, whatever that meant. Seemed to him that this Pattern had become a twisted, knotty thing. He stared at the wreckage of the Great Lodge. ‘I need to find my son,’ he said, half-choking on grief, knowing it was too late, that Magnar had been burned alive. ‘I promised her. I promised Mhaira.’

  ‘We will pass near Beregund on the way. You may find your wife there. As for Magnar, it seems it is too late to fulfil this promise, unless you wish to gather his bones from the ash. The demons will not wait for you, Sword of the North. We must begin preparations to leave immediately.’

  ‘Then I’ll find Krazka,’ Kayne snarled. ‘I’m gonna make that fucker pay.’

  ‘He left through the east gate. Your son was taken the same way earlier,’ announced a powerful voice that stirred old memories.

  Both Carn and Kayne turned as the newcomer approached. The years had stolen much of his hard muscle but the figure of Orgrim Foehammer was unmistakable. His beard was matted with blood, and he held a hand over his stomach, wincing painfully with every breath. ‘I tried to stop him fleeing when I saw we’d lost. A sorceress found me and did what she could, but damn, it still hurts something fierce.’

  ‘Foehammer,’ grated Carn. ‘You stood with the usurper. I should kill you now.’

  Orgrim bowed his head, deep shame in his eyes. ‘Aye, you should. I wouldn’t try to stop you, not that I maybe ever could. But I wanted to bring word to an old friend first.’ Orgrim reached out a hand. After a moment’s hesitation Kayne clasped it. The two had been close once. Orgrim had saved his life on the banks on the Icemelt. Guided him through his Initiation to become a Warden.

  ‘You’re hurt too,’ Orgrim observed.

  Kayne glanced at his mangled wrist. ‘No time to find a sorceress,’ he grunted. ‘I need a horse.’

  ‘You do this, you do it alone,’ Carn rumbled. ‘My responsibility is towards my people. The demons will be here within a day. We must be moving by then.’

  Kayne nodded and blinked something out of his eyes. A snowflake. ‘I’ll catch you if I can.’

  Orgrim shook his head. ‘Krazka has hired killers with him. Some of the most vicious men I’ve seen in my near sixty years. And his sole surviving Kingsman is a giant of a warrior.’

  ‘I’ve killed giants before. Real ones.’

  ‘He’s got a sorceress with him as well, not to mention some kind of weapon that can blow a man’s head off from a hundred yards. It floored the Shaman, who we once reckoned immortal. You’ll die, Kayne.’

  Kayne glanced up at the sky. Iron clouds had gathered. The air was heavy with anticipation of a coming storm. ‘I can live with that,’ he said. His knees hurt, his wrist hurt, his chest hurt. But he had a promise to keep. ‘Besides,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It’s a good day to die.’

  *

  ‘Fucking snow.’

  Krazka shielded his good eye with one hand and wrapped his new cloak tighter around him with the other. The pelt of the Highland cat had served him well for a decade, but there was something very satisfying about wearing the hide of the first demon that had attacked him since the Herald’s betrayal. It was said the Sword of the North had killed a blink demon single-handed back in the day.

  And now the Butcher King has, too.

  ‘Almost had me, didn’t you, boy?’ he said jovially. He reached down and patted the feline-shaped carcass beside the fire. He’d had to carry it some way
to the shore of Lake Dragur. Truth be told, it’d been a real bitch to skin the fiend, but Lenka and his two brothers had lent him a hand. They were sitting opposite him across the fire while Bagha kept watch. Not that the massive warrior could see much through the snowstorm, but it pleased Krazka to make the man suffer.

  ‘Your brothers don’t talk much, do they?’ he said to Lenka. The thin Lakeman shrugged. Beside him his elder siblings stared balefully at nothing in particular. Krazka turned to the fifth figure beside the fire. Thick rope secured the wrists of Magnar Kayne behind his back, but in truth it wasn’t needed. The lad was closer to dead than alive. Krazka hadn’t been able to get much out of him all morning, no matter how and where he poked the grey-eyed former king. ‘We’ll get you talking before this storm’s over. Well... I say “talking”, but I reckon “squealing” might be closer to the mark. Lenka, you wanna have a go? A gold coin if you can get him to scream.’

  The killer got to his feet and padded over to their prisoner. White sheets fell around them, blown in by freezing southern winds. The waters of Lake Dragur lapped softly against the shore just to their left. Unlike the Icemelt, which froze in late autumn, the lake was fed by heated springs originating in the volcanic peaks of the Black Reaching. The water was rarely cold enough to freeze, and even when it did the ice was easy enough to break. It would provide a handy source of food until a better plan presented itself.

  Lenka bent down and examined the knives at his belt. ‘This one,’ he said finally, withdrawing an exceptionally thin blade with a wicked edge. ‘I call it the skin-peeler.’

  ‘Imaginative,’ Krazka drawled. The sixth and final figure beside the fire whimpered and he turned to her in annoyance. ‘Don’t get teary on me now, sweetheart. You didn’t have to come.’

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ grumbled Bagha from where he kept watch. He shifted his head a little, as though he might have spotted something of interest.