A Sea of Skulls (Arts of Dark and Light Book 2)

by Vox Day

  Fortunately, they crested the rise before too much longer, at which point Lodi called for a halt. He posted one pair of guards ahead and another behind the party; one thing he’d learned about tunnel wars was that the enemy could appear from anywhere, including above or below. After reassuring the grumbling guards that a rotating schedule would be established, he went to find Myf and see how she was doing. She was sharing her water with a young dwarf who seemed to be regarding their unexpected jaunt as an adventure and a lark.

  “Are you holding up all right?” he asked.

  She looked up at him and smiled shyly. “You look very fierce in that armor.”

  “It beats plate for hiking. I daresay Boru started wishing he was wearing chain before we even hit that hill.” He kneeled down and ruffled the hair of the paslido. “You take good care of the lady, now.”

  “My mama is scared, but I’m not,” the young dwarf declared. “I wanted a pick, but they said they was too heavy.”

  Lodi laughed. “Give it time, little one.” He glanced at Myf. “Got that dagger I gave you?”

  “Right here.” She pulled back her cloak and showed how she’d slipped it into an impromptu rope belt.

  “Good,” he said. “Things get confusing in the dark. Remember, stay low and strike low, and always slash up, not down.”

  He nodded to the paslido again and walked back to the front, exchanging words and answering questions without stopping until he’d reached Boru and the two guards.

  “Hear anything?”

  “Nothing, sir,” one of the guards said. He was even older than Boru, but something about the easy way he leaned upon his pickaxe told Lodi he’d seen war.

  “Good. Boru, you catch your breath yet? No sense wearing that gear if you’re too tired to fight if we get jumped.”

  “Shut your filthy pyrite mouth,” Boru shot back. “Sooner we get going, sooner we get there.”

  “All right.” Lodi took a torch from the old guard and sent the two of them to spread the word that they were about to start moving again. “Tell everyone to stay close, I don’t want anyone getting left behind.”

  They waited and watched the bobbing torch make its way back, then Lodi nodded at Boru and they began their long march anew. The track was entirely cold now and devoid of any hint of life. It was flat for a while, then almost imperceptibly began declining, although not so steeply that it was necessary to lean backward to fight it. The tunnel seemed to be arcing to the left, and for a moment, Lodi could have sworn that he heard mining sounds coming from somewhere overhead. But that made no sense, they were too deep for surface dwellers to be digging down, and too close to the tunnel for it to be a mining operation.

  “I can’t hear it, but my ears are older’n yourn,” Boru said after Lodi drew it to his attention. “This deep, the rocks are alive, and sometimes they talk.”

  Lodi shrugged. Sometimes the earth really did move, and obviously, that was bound to make some noise. Although there were no visible signs of the next station, he began to feel they were getting close. A faint glow appeared ahead.

  “Do you see that?”

  “Probably just a waymarker. And not necessarily the last one.”

  But as they walked on, it gradually became apparent that the glow was too bright to be a mere waymarker. Lodi soon saw that the light was flickering, even as it seemed to be growing in intensity. And then he scented smoke, a more pungent, more powerful scent than the one given off by the torch he was holding.

  “That’s fire!” he blurted.

  “What should we do?”

  “I don’t know, but we can’t go back! Let’s go see if we can help put it out. If it gets too big, it could smother us all!” Fire was one of the great fears of the dwarves, it was both their most vital friend and their most lethal foe. More dwarves died every year of smoke inhalation than of mining accidents, getting lost, and cave goblin attacks combined.

  He barked word back to the rest and they picked up the pace. But as they drew nearer, the sounds of conflict could be heard. Lodi couldn’t tell if it was goblins, orcs, or simple dwarf-on-dwarf violence, but whatever it was, it was definitely no place for paslhas and paslidhas. He called Raldri forward.

  “Pick out ten to stay and guard the others. Fall back about 300 steps and wait one hour, but no more! If one of us doesn’t get word back to you then, lead them back to the train and wait there. We’ll all leave our food and water here for you; someone will have to come eventually.”

  “What’s going on up there?” Raldri said, trying, and not entirely succeeding, to avoid sounding relieved that he wouldn’t be finding out soon. The clash of metal on metal was more apparent now that they knew what they were hearing.

  “Somebody’s trying to kill somebody else. We’re either going to help them or stop them.”

  “Okay.” Raldri put his hand on Lodi’s armored shoulder. “You can count on me, Lodi.”

  “I am,” Lodi said. “Keep an eye on Myf, you’ll have to see her deep if I can’t.”

  The younger dwarf nodded; Lodi swatted him on the back and jogged forward to join the makeshift company that Boru had organized into four rows of six. Even in the dim, flickering torchlight he could see that their faces were strained and the knuckles that gripped their shiny new pickaxes were white. Poor lads. It was a hell of a way to go into battle for the first time, untrained, unarmored, and completely uninformed about the enemy.

  There wasn’t much time for instructions or encouragement, so he kept it simple. “Follow Boru and me and keep it tight, lads. We don’t know what we’ll find, so be ready for anything. Watch the sides of the dwarf next to you and poke with the flat head, don’t swing it and get it stuck. Bash, don’t stab!”

  He spotted Orin in the second row, his eyes wild with fear in his black-bearded face. “Oi, Orin, you’re all right, lad. Stick with me and we’ll see it through.”

  “Just a little sooner than I was expecting, Lodi.”

  Lodi frowned as half the dwarves burst out laughing even though they couldn’t have possibly known what Orin meant. It was nervous laughter, bordering on hysteria. “Keep it tight, lads,” he repeated. “Poke and bash, don’t swing and stab. Now, follow me!”

  He hurled the torch aside and slipped his two-handed axe over his head. Boru was already holding his double-bladed great axe in both hands. Without further ado, he began jogging forward, not looking back to see if the others were following. The sound of battle grew louder as they approached the light, and Lodi could feel a slight warmth on his face from the burning fires.

  As they rounded the final curve, he realized that the station, indeed, the town, was under attack. The situation wasn’t as quite as bad as he feared, as two buildings at the station were alight, but there was a team of dwarves already busily engaged in putting one of them out with sand, gravel, and water that was being pumped from a reservoir he couldn’t see.

  He couldn’t quite see who their fellows were fighting, as being down on the level of the track, all he could see was the backs of the rearmost dwarves. When they reached the platform, he slid his axe onto it, clambered up, then turned around and extended a hand to help the dwarves following him, pulling them up one after the other while Boru got them back into formation.

  He had just gotten back to the front when as something smashed its way through the thin defensive line set up by the station dwarves, felling one dwarf before shoving the dwarf next to him aside. It locked eyes with Lodi as he brandished his axe and then it bared its teeth as it gave an angry, unintelligible war cry.

  Lodi nearly dropped his axe. Not because he was frightened, but because he had never, ever seen anything like the creature that stood in front of him, holding a crude iron bar in one hand. It looked like a dwarf, but a dwarf that was encased in some sort of metallic scales instead of skin and its eyes were yellow like an orc or a goblin. Was it armor? Or was it some sort of unholy abomination from the Underdeep?

  Whatever it was, it leaped at him, swinging its weapon ho
rizontally at his head. Lodi dropped to one knee and the bar passed over him even as he swung his axe in a vicious plane about two arms-lengths below it. He saw that the creature bled just as red as any other dwarf as the upper half of its body abruptly parted company with the lower half, showering him with its blood.

  He rose quickly to his feet, gore dripping from his axe. “Kingsguard!” he roared without even realizing what he was shouting. “Kingsguard!” the dwarves behind him echoed. And then he led them forward into the fray.

  Steinthor

  Steinthor Strongbow was privy to two secrets. The first belonged to several of the others numbered among Raknarborg’s final defenders. The other was his alone. In the meantime, he was greatly relieved to see that the Redcheek’s ruse had worked, and he watched as the black sails of the last longship grew smaller as Ulvdræber sailed forth under a dark, starless sky. Soon the longship disappeared into the deepening gloom no eyes, however keen, could penetrate. Even if there were wolves on the shore who had seen Ulvdræber depart, the longship was now safe from any pursuit.

  “Fare you well, Skullbreaker,” he said aloud. “Fare you well, Redcheek.”

  He turned back from the arrow-slit from which he was peering and descended down the wooden stairs of the sea tower into the room in the central keep that was now serving as their final staging ground. Armor, shields, axes, and spears were scattered throughout the room, leaned against walls and tables or simply piled haphazardly on the floor. The other four captains were waiting for him there, along with twelve or fifteen other men who were acting as his bodyguard for this, the final battle. All of them were wounded, some worse than others. Horse-Bjorn was drinking from a large mug of mead with his shield arm bound closely to his breast. Ottar the Grævling stood at his side, his face flushed with the iron-fever that would not kill him now. Hrafnkel Half-Giant towered over the rest of them, his head nearly touching the giant beams of the ceiling.

  Upon hearing his approach, they turned to him, waiting for his news.

  “The Skullbreaker took some persuading, but he went with the Redcheek in the end. Ulvdræber is safely away. I saw no sign of pursuit.”

  A cheer went up, with two exceptions. The Grævling was lost in his thoughts. The Half-Giant, as was customary, looked vaguely confused.

  “Who commands tonight, if the Skullbreaker be gone?”

  Not for the first time, Steinthor found himself marveling that despite the man’s prodigious strength, he hadn’t managed to get himself killed in nearly three weeks of near-constant battle. The Aalvarg aside, it was a miracle that Hrafnkel hadn’t broken his massive neck tumbling down a stairwell or falling from a tower. He was clumsy and he was slow-witted, but he could literally rip a wolf-thing in half with his bare hands. Steinthor had seen him do it.

  And like the rest of those who remained behind, the giant was badly wounded. He had lost an eye early in the siege, and two nights ago an Aalvarg spear penetrated his thigh. Now he limped worse than Steinthor did, and he needed two men, two strong men, to help him navigate the stairs. The Half-Giant would be among the those who were certain to fall tonight. Knowing he could not retreat, the big man had agreed to meet the final assault on the tower with his twenty-five men. They would hold the line and stay behind while the others fell back to the keep.

  Steinthor had no doubt that Hrafnkel would slaughter many wolves before he fell. But the grey tide was simply too great, and whoever was commanding the wolves seemed to value Aalvarg lives as little as he did those of their enemies.

  “I, Steinthor, the Strongbow, command, Hrafnkel,” he declared loudly. “I promise nothing but death, certain death, a warrior’s death. Our plan is simple. Tonight we fight, and tonight we die. Are there any here who object?”

  “Strongbow, the Strongbow!” Horse-Bjorn shouted and others were soon to pick up the cry. “Strongbow!”

  Steinthor nodded. For years he had followed the Skullbreaker. For one night, and one night only, he would lead the clans. But first, there was something that must be done. He limped into the center of the room, all eyes upon him.

  “Hear now the death-song of Steinthor, by some called the Strongbow,” he called out to them.

  The Wolf lies waiting.

  The Moon covers her silver eyes

  In fear and sorrow.

  No more shall I sing.

  Silence will rule over ruins

  Come the dawn morrow

  Never shall they learn,

  Fair ladies I have known in love,

  From enemies’ blows

  I backward turned me.

  Here shall my body, fallen, lie

  Devoured by demons, wolves, and crows.

  Nor shall she taunt me,

  Fair Ingoberg, across the sea,

  That from swords I fled

  Or from wolves I ran.

  At Raknarborg I stood among my friends,

  The valiant dead.

  Once my courage failed

  Before the white-browed jarl’s daughter.

  To a better man

  It was I lost her.

  In fear I held my tongue and so

  Dared not ask her hand.

  A lasting sorrow comes

  This night to the fair Ingoberg.

  No more shall Steinthor

  Hold her in his secret heart.

  Wounded and lame, I stand here, doomed,

  On this Aalvarg-stinking shore.

  Will it wring the heart

  Of the jarl’s proud, white-browed daughter,

  And the Skullbreaker’s wife,

  When comes the crow to tell

  Of the red end of Raknarborg

  And the Strongbow’s life?

  Knokkelmanden rides

  The Loptrbørn bear him hither

  What man here will flee?

  Who will run in fear?

  I, the Strongbow, will fight the Wolf.

  Who here stands with me?

  They come from the North

  Mighty flocks of famished ravens

  Whom I have fed well.

  Once more I feed them.

  On my corpse they’ll gorge and fatten.

  But my spirit,

  In Glaðsheimr,

  Shall henceforth ever dwell!

  As the last words echoed off the stone walls of the chamber, there was a moment of respectful silence. Then came much whooping and hollering, wooden mugs of mead were raised, and many a surreptitious tear was brushed away.

  “Aye, we’ll stand with you, you cowardly bastard,” Horse-Bjorn blustered as he embraced Steinthor and thumped his back. “Did you really think none here knew you were still besotted with the Skullbreaker’s wife after all these years? Fordømme, man! Skuli never forgot how you got there first, but he loved you too far too well to hold it against you.”

  Steinthor stared at the big warleader, too surprised to speak.

  “You knew?” he finally said.

  “Who didn’t?” Horse-Bjorn laughed loudly. “I suppose there might be a few wolves out there from the outer islands that are still in the dark, but there wasn’t a maiden in one of the Fifteen Clans who didn’t envy—what did you call her? Ah yes, ‘the white-browed jarl’s daughter’, the woman who held the hearts of the two greatest warriors left to us in the palm of her pretty hands. Could have been a proper saga in the making there, if only you and the Skullbreaker would have fallen out over her.”

  “Never once did we speak of it!”

  “Sure, and it would have been damned stupid, considering how we were all fighting for our lives. But men are stupid when it comes to harboring their longships, especially in so sweet a harbor. Believe me, Strongbow, there were women counting their fingers when Brynjolf was born.”

  “I never touched her, not after–”

  “Oh, I know. I know.” Horse-Bjorn thumped him on the back again. “But it was a bloody good thing you were away reaving at the time or many a wicked tongue would have been set to wagging!”

  Hrafnkel Half-Giant
dragged his huge frame over and lightly placed a massive hand on Steinthor’s shoulder. A dark tear-track ran through his dark brown beard under his remaining eye. “It is my honor to stand with the Strongbow, tonight. We die well, Captain.”

  Steinthor placed his own hand over the giant’s. The sight made him smile; it looked like a child reaching out to his father.

  “The honor is mine, Half-Giant,” he assured Hrafnkel. “We will kill many wolves. Better than dying in bed like a woman or an old man, eh?”

  In light of the grim night before them, the mood in the room was surprisingly jocular. The mead helped, of course. This was no time to go into battle sober. He accepted a mug from the Grævling, raised to salute the men nearby, and drained it. If the laughter was a little louder than the jests might otherwise have provoked, and if the protestations of indifference towards death sometimes sounded a little forced, it didn’t matter. It was only the way men who lacked true courage found it in the company of their doughtier fellows.

  Perhaps they were the bravest of all, Steinthor mused as he quaffed another mug, albeit in a more measured manner. Those who feared death, but feared the contempt of their brothers-in-arms more. He frowned. That didn’t make much sense, come to think of it. Well, it probably wasn’t worth dwelling on. He wasn’t afraid to die, anyhow. He might not be a berserker, biting at his shield and lusting for battle, but he was beginning to feel a little impatient waiting for the wolf to come.

  He was just mulling the wisdom of a third mug when he heard someone’s boots thumping their way down the stairs from the northern tower. It was young Bosi, he saw, Horse-Bjorn’s cousin, who’d been left behind as a result of losing his sword arm at the elbow four days ago. The stump was infected and inflamed, but didn’t prevent him from serving as a messenger for the warriors who remained.

  “They come,” he shouted. “The wolves are coming!”

  The men reacted without hesitation, reaching for their spears and shields. Some of the men whose arms were bandaged or missing clamored for help with their armor, and Steinthor helped Horse-Bjorn strap his shield on tightly to his useless arm. The old veteran grinned at him, exposing a line of black and rotted teeth on the left side of his mouth.