by Ben Galley
‘And Korrin?’ asked Farden. Hel’s scowl burrowed even deeper. She lifted a hand to cup her ear, raising a contemptuous smile to the ceiling of the colossal cavern.
‘If you listen hard enough, you can still hear his heart beating. For a thousand years or more it has beaten. Thump. Thump. Thump. Sluggish, yet resilient. Foul it is. Sends shivers down my spine. A thousand years I have listened to that heart. It has no place here, and yet it taunts me. He refuses to die. Refuses to cross.’
Farden opened his arms wide. ‘Fair game as well then!’
Hel flashed him a black look, literally. ‘I know why you seek him. I see what you wear on your arms and legs, mage. Greed is a most despicable thing, as you say. Most of these,’ she waved to the silently swaying cargo on her ship, ‘are here due to greed.’
It was Farden’s turn to scowl. ‘Greed has nothing to do with it,’ he growled. ‘Sacrifice, on the other hand, has everything to do with it.’
Hel cracked a wide grin, full of black teeth. ‘Sacrifice, you say? In that case, let us discuss your payment.’
The two mages swapped looks. ‘Payment for what?’ they asked. Behind them, Loki couldn’t help but grin.
‘For the crossing of course,’ replied Hel, cackling. ‘Every ferry has its fee, does it not? Did you think I would simply let you cross, out of the kindness of my own heart? Let you steal away my precious souls, for nothing but gratitude in return? Hah! Fools indeed.’
Farden reached for his coinpurse. ‘So just how much exactly is this fee?’ he asked, fishing for some larger coins with his metal fingers.
Hel laughed again at the sight of the mage rummaging for coins. She laughed long and hard indeed. So long and so hard, in fact, that Farden almost began to reach for his sword. When she was finally done, Hel wiped away imaginary tears and rubbed her bony hands together with glee. ‘Why, master mage, the fee has nothing to do with coins, even though you delight in putting them on your dead, before the pyre.’
‘Then what?’
The humour on Hel’s face remained, even though her eyes turned cold. ‘Why, everybody owes a death. Even you, who has known so much already.’
There was a moment of silence before anybody spoke. Farden scratched his head. ‘So you’re saying…’
‘The price to cross to the other side is your life, yes. You may save your friend, of course, you may claim your armour, but only the dead may cross, and only the dead may reside here. That was Korrin’s price, and so it shall be yours.’
Farden put a hand on his sword. ‘I’d like to see you try to stop us.’
Hel clicked her fingers. ‘Kneel,’ she commanded. Farden was about to scoff when something heavy, impossibly heavy, pushed down on his shoulders and the backs of his legs. The next thing he knew, he was sprawled on the disgusting deck, hands splayed in the nails, knees pressing so hard into the deck that they ached. ‘You have no power here, Farden, and neither do you, Tyrfing.’ Her black eyes seemed to flick up to his uncle, who was standing with his hands at the ready.
Tyrfing raised a finger. ‘Surely an exception can be made, considering the circumstances?’
Hel tilted her head. ‘And what, pray, are they?’
‘We need the armour to fight my nephew’s daughter. The one he spoke of.’
Hel just shrugged. ‘That is not my fight.’
Tyrfing’s mouth hung open. ‘But you’re a goddess. Of course it is your fight!’ he said.
Farden was wheezing on the floor. ‘Selfish b…’
Tyrfing cut him off. ‘Hel, we’re asking for your help, a spot of kindness. Not just for us, but for your brothers and sisters,’ he reasoned, pointing at Loki, who was still skulking nearby. Hel looked at him with a blank expression.
‘And why should I help the ones who sent me down here? Banished me, to frolic with the dead?’
Tyrfing bowed his head, clenched a fist or two, and sighed. Farden grunted as he tried, futilely, to push himself up. Hel waited for an answer. Tyrfing cleared his throat. ‘Can we speak in private?’ he asked.
‘If you so wish,’ Hel said. She clicked her fingers again. ‘Up,’ she said, and Farden flew upright, boots stumbling against the deck.
‘Give us a moment,’ Tyrfing said to Farden. His nephew mumbled something derogatory and marched away, followed by a silent Loki. They went to stand by the bow, surrounded and jostled by shadows. The ship was full to bursting.
Farden watched the two figures at the stern talking. Tyrfing was waving his hands about in an urgent fashion. Hel looked on, still as a dead statue. Every now and again her mouth would move, and Tyrfing would wave his hands a little more.
‘I wonder what he’s saying to her,’ Farden mumbled to himself. Loki wasn’t paying attention, he was busy trying to grasp the arm of a nearby shadow. If Farden had turned around, he might have seen Loki’s skin ripple with each attempt.
‘Loki!’ a shout rang out from the wheel. ‘Leave them be. It is forbidden, even for I!’ It was Hel. Loki whipped his hands back into his pockets as Farden turned around. He looked the god up and down quizzically.
‘We sent her down here because she was mad,’ Loki said, quietly. ‘A nuisance. Unreliable.’
Farden snorted. ‘Maybe they should have sent you instead.’
Tyrfing soon finished his conversation with Hel. He pushed his way through the dead, trying to stifle a cough.
‘Well?’ Farden asked, as he drew near. As if in answer to his question, the ship twitched beneath their feet. There was a loud scraping as the keel dragged itself clear of the shore.
‘Apparently, I did it.’
‘How did you convince her?’
Tyrfing tapped his head conspiratorially. ‘It turns out that heartbeat is more annoying to her than two mages crossing the river without paying the usual price. If we can silence it, then she’s agreed to let us cross. You, Loki, don’t count, but you and I, nephew, have a return ticket.’
‘And no dying?’
‘No dying.’
‘If only we had some wine to celebrate,’ Loki muttered snidely. Farden went to shove him, but to his surprise, the god didn’t move very much at all. He barely flinched. It was most unsatisfying. Farden rolled his eyes. I cannot wait to leave this strange place. Even the shadows are solid, he thought to himself.
‘Well,’ he said, clapping his old uncle on the shoulder, ‘good work. Maybe politics does suit you after all.’
Tyrfing smiled a lopsided smile. ‘Maybe,’ he said. He waited until Farden had turned around before he let the smile fade. He retched and spluttered then as another wave of coughing took him.
Dark and fast, the deep water of the river took the ship in its grip and bore them away, out of the cavern and into a long tunnel of rock and mist. The lanterns hanging from the ship’s side barely lit the way as they swerved to and fro through the twisting tunnel. The dead rode silently along, caring not a button for the rock flashing by mere feet from the bulwarks, or the gloomy ceiling hurtling past, threatening to knock a few yards off the masts with every turn.
Farden, Tyrfing, and Loki stood at the bow, trying to count the miles as they sped by. More than once, Farden glanced occasionally back at Hel, her face now masked by her wheel. She and it barely moved. It was almost as if the wheel were there for decoration only. That set a knot in Farden’s stomach. The ship was at the river’s mercy.
Tunnel turned to cavern and more dead came aboard. Farden didn’t think it possible, but they swarmed into the dark holds below, to mingle with the toe and fingernails and the occasional mouldy coin, poking out of the decking.
Soon they were off again, hurtling into the darkness once more. Cavern turned to tunnel, and then cavern again. Farden wondered how far they were travelling under the world, whether they were being borne far, far away from the north and its ice, and whether they could find their way back in time. As far as Farden could see, there was only one river, and it was only flowing in one direction.
After another handful of miles, the
ship slowed, wrestling itself out of the river’s strong current. As they emerged from their tunnel into yet another huge cavern, the ship drifted to nuzzle against the shingle of the shore. Farden looked over the bulwark, expecting to see yet another endless crowd of shadows clamouring to climb aboard, but instead there was an empty beach of shingle and rock, with faint paths leading into holes in the rock, like the mouths of rabbit warrens, filled with mist.
‘Off!’ screamed the figurehead.
Farden took a breath. ‘Looks like this is it.’
‘The other side.’
Hel was somehow behind them. The mages barely suppressed the instinct to jump. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘That is over the bridge.’
‘Bridge?’
‘Through the tunnels,’ she pointed to the holes in the rock, and then to the dead filing off the ship. They drifted across the stones, whispering to themselves. As eager as they had been to get on the ship, they now looked tired and listless, more like the dead should. They wandered with their hands limply at their sides, no longer pushing and struggling, but calmly sliding past each other.
Farden took another breath. He exhaled, and words came with it. ‘Well, time is running out, gentlemen,’ he said, and with that he began to push his way through the disembarking dead.
Loki followed. Tyrfing trailed behind. Just as he set his foot on the gangplank, Hel called after him. ‘Remember our agreement, Tyrfing,’ she reminded him.
‘How could I forget?’ he muttered, over his shoulder. She waved as he disappeared over the side of the ship.
‘How could you, indeed?’ she asked the silence.
Chapter 28
“Written Mages! We value our sanity and our health. Towels, tunics, or shirts to be worn at all times please, even in private!”
Old rule of the Spire, found gouged into a beam
In battle, seconds stretch to minutes. Anything can happen in them. All it took to start this battle was three.
One.
Samara raised her hands to the jaundiced sky, fingers bent and twisted like the gnarled branches of a lightning-struck tree.
Two.
The ledge of rock under her feet cracked. Then came a deep boom, one that almost matched the volcanos and their fury. The daemons and wolves jumped clear as it sagged into a crater of splintered rock, Samara standing shaking in its epicentre.
Three.
A shockwave burst outwards from the girl. A rolling wave of dust and ice, throwing all but the strongest to the ground. It made the earth shake and the ice crack as it bubbled outwards, flying faster than the eye could blink.
‘Oof!’ Modren gasped as he was tossed to the ground like a sack of meat. He gasped, the breath driven out of him. There was a great whooshing sound as the air rushed back in to fill the vacuum the shockwave had left in its wake. Modren felt his ears pop, half deafening him. Dizziness swamped him, and he floundered in the snow, listening to the dull, muted sounds of panic around him. He watched as a group of snowmads tried to keep a sled from overturning. It was cracking under its own weight. There was a distant crash, and the sled crumpled. Nearby, a mage was hauling an unconscious Siren back to the battle lines. He was yelling at others with every step, the faint echoes lost on Modren’s ears. He looked north. He saw one of the two daemons striding across the landscape, unhinging his jaw to roar at the sky. Nothing more than a moan reached his ears, like a tired wind.
Fingers grabbed him and hauled him upright. Inwick was there, frantically probing his body for wounds. Eyrum was shaking him, saying something, Modren couldn’t tell. His voice was a dullish rumble. Durnus was abruptly amongst them. He grabbed Modren by the skull, with both hands, and the Undermage felt something sharp run down his spine.
The world came back to him in a roar.
‘By the gods!’ Modren gasped as his ears popped again, painfully. ‘What was that?!’
‘Now is not the time to be discussing spells, Modren!’ Durnus was yelling. ‘We need to get everybody back to the sleds, now! It has begun!’
‘Yes, your Mage!’ Modren shouted in reply. The sound of the wind and the volcano was deafening. Ice whipped their legs and faces. Modren beat his sword against his chest. ‘Written! To me!’
The sound of the earth cracking was the least of Samara’s worries. Her bones were more her concern. She could hear them cracking too.
Samara’s spell was winding up to its fierce crescendo. Far quicker than before. Too quick, for her liking. She had barely enough strength to keep herself from crumpling like a burnt twig.
She didn’t dare spare a glance as she heard another boom beneath her feet. The hill lurched as she took a tighter grip on the sky. Her eyes were fixed on a cluster of stars, right above her. She reached toward them with her nails and slowly pulled her arms back.
Fire began to lick at her boots. Their leather had already been ground to dust under the pressure. Now the stone around her was being flattened and knuckled like wet clay. Veins of red popped out of its black skin as it crunched and whined, hot red veins full of molten stone. The fire leapt higher.
Inch by terrible inch her arms slid back to her sides. Samara could feel her knees buckling. She spared a desperate moment to push a spell into her legs, hardening her bones to keep them from cracking. It was not a moment too soon. She hauled her arms back and the weight of the spell drove her to her knees. She cried out as the hot stone cut her flesh. The spell was in full swing now. The fire howled around. Splinters of stone spun about her. The wind roared.
In her mind, all Samara kept seeing was the sharp teeth of her daemon kin, smiling and congratulating her for what she had done. She could feel their arms lifting her up above the crowds of daemons and their worshippers. She could hear her name like the crashing of a waterfall. Samara! Samara! Samara! They would shout it until the sun went down.
As the first stars flashed in the tawny sky, despite all the pain, she began to smile.
‘They’re coming!’ It was a useless shout. A young soldier or sailor no doubt, too terrified to keep quiet. Too excited to realise everyone else was pointing and gawping.
There was a collective crunch of ice and steel as everyone tensed. The whole line of sleds and soldiers, curved like a sour smile, clenched. A thousand pairs of eyes turned to the sky.
At first, the stars just twinkled and flashed, as innocuous and circumspect as any other bright stars on any other morning. Then they began to spit and flare. As each one punched through the atmosphere of the world, they grew from twinkling little gems to roaring, plummeting furnaces, flame and smoke streaming from their sides as they fell. Dull thunder echoed across the wastes below, each a star hitting the cold air.
It took them a full minute to fall to the ice. A full minute of gawping. A full minute of stern faces and wide eyes. A full minute of sore fingers strangling sword handles. Then they struck.
One, two, three, four, five… they hit the ice in devastating sequence, puncturing five smoking holes in a wide arc between the hill and the line of brave fighters. Clouds of steam flew like geysers as their inhabitants came to a shuddering, bone-shaking rest. A terrible moment followed, silent save for the roars of the wind, Samara, and the Spine. Then, one by one, claws and foreheads appeared over their blackened rims. Eyes of all shapes and colours. Hides of black, grey, ashen white, yellow, and red glistened in the light of the fire. Some were small, others as large as Valefor and Hokus. Some had bodies like that of men, others like that of nightmares. They looked hungrily at the line of men and women spread before them, barely half a mile away.
‘Hold your ground!’ ordered Modren, from the centre of the line. He could hear a nervous muttering running through the crowds, rustling like autumn leaves. ‘Hold your damn ground!’
‘More,’ spat Eyrum, eyeing the sky. He pointed with his axe, and Modren followed it up to another section of the sky, where another dozen stars had begun to glow brightly.
‘We’ll lose them if we’re not careful,’ Modren hissed, looking about at
the anxious faces dotted around them. ‘They’re only now realising what we’re up against.’
‘Bah,’ Eyrum snorted. ‘They should have seen the hydra.’
‘And you killed that, didn’t you?’
‘Indeed we did.’
‘Then by that logic, we’ll be fine,’ Modren said. He stepped out of the line and turned to face their army. He had his shield in his hand, his sword in the other. Men dragged their eyes from the skies to look at him. More whispers ran through the crowd.
‘A speech?’
‘Are we retreating?’
‘He’s going to barter for our lives!’
Modren was doing none of that. He looked up and down the line, noting the heads craning to see him. He raised his sword high above his head, and brought the flat of it crashing down on his shield with a loud clang. He did it again and again, beating out a solid rhythm, and all the while he looked up and down, looking, praying even, for people to join in. It was Eyrum who stepped forward first. Trusty Eyrum. He had a grin on his battered face. Modren matched it as the big Siren began to hammer his own shield with the head of his axe.
Inwick was next, beating hers with the pommel of her sword. The three drummed their rhythm proudly. Then it began to spread. The Written took up the beat, and then the Arka soldiers. The sailors, mostly without shields, began to shout and stamp their feet. Man to man and woman to woman the rhythm spread, like summer fire through ranks of dry trees. Fists punched breastplates. Shields met swords. Clubs and boots battered the ice.
Modren began to increase the speed of the rhythm. What had begun as a slow, plodding drumming now became a fierce thundering. Faster and faster they went, and as they drummed, shouts ripped from throats. War cries filled the air. The snowmads screamed strange songs. Roars from the dragons deafened any who stood near. Beasts snarled and screeched. The wildmen bellowed and grunted from the rear.