by D. P. Prior
“Oh, no,” said the Nameless Dwarf. “You’re not going anywhere. I have a special job for you.”
No slur? Just a moment ago he’d been as drunk as Silas!
Then Nils remembered the fight at The Grinning Skull and his heart caught in his throat. He inched around so that he faced the dwarf and looked into his brooding dark eyes. Nameless was stone cold sober.
“Here,” the dwarf said, shrugging off his pack and handing it to Nils. “Put it on.”
Nils felt powerless to do anything but obey.
“And hold this,” said Nameless, passing Nils his axe.
Nils stooped under the weight. How had the dwarf carried it all this way, never mind fought with it?
“Pass him your bag,” Nameless said to Silas.
Silas wiped the vomit from his face with his coat sleeve and made a feeble flick of his fingers.
“No, s’alright,” he said. “I’ll keep hold of it.”
“Suit yourself,” said Nameless before shooting Nils a toothy grin.
“Consider yourself duly employed, laddie.” He sauntered down the steps with Silas groaning and shambling behind.
“What do you mean?” said Nils struggling to follow. “I ain’t coming with you, and I ain’t carrying all this.”
Nameless spun, his face hard like chiselled stone. Nils tried to swallow but found he had no spit.
“Repeat after me,” said the dwarf in an uncompromising tone. “I am a pack mule.”
Nils shook his head. “No way.”
Nameless raised an eyebrow ever so slightly.
“I’m a pack mule!” Nils squealed. “I’m a shogging pack mule! Satisfied?”
“Extremely,” said Nameless turning on his heel and heading out across town towards the shadow of the Farfall Mountains.
“Wait up,” said Silas looking as green as a week old corpse and stumbling along the cobbled road in pursuit.
“Come on,” Nameless called over his shoulder. “It’s a perfect day for adventure. Let’s pass through the gauntlet of the mountains and into the promised land. Shog, if the mood doesn’t leave me I’ll run the length and breadth of Qlippoth and have my people home before the suns set.”
“Right,” muttered Nils under his breath. “Either that or we’ll be torn apart the minute we cross the border.”
A dark shape slunk out from behind one of the shacks flanking the road.
Nameless seemed heedless of the danger. He was skipping in his excitement to reach the pass and almost collided with the emerging woman. Silas was jogging in fits and starts to keep up with the dwarf, his breath coming in gasps.
“Hello,” said Nameless looking suddenly timid and uncertain.
Nils drew alongside Silas and looked the woman up and down. Swollen breasts, wide hips, and garbed in black leather like the strumpet back at The Grinning Skull. Only this one was short. Extremely short. Dwarfish even.
“By the tug of my beard—” Nameless rubbed his barren chin. “Are you—?”
Nils lifted his eyes to her face, half expecting to see whiskers and a moustache.“No,” he said with sudden realisation.
The dwarf lady’s eyes narrowed; only she wasn’t a dwarf lady. Nils shook his head and clucked his tongue.
Nameless swung towards him.
“No? What—?”
He turned back to the newcomer and then wagged his finger.
“Ah!” said Nameless. “The woman from the pub!”
“Ilesa,” said Nils.
Ilesa gave a lop-sided smile and then blew Nils a derisive kiss.
“So you’re going then?” she said to Nameless. “Into Qlippoth?”
“That’s where my path is leading me,” said the dwarf, his voice still straining at the edge of song. “Coming?” He eyed her up and down.
“Would you like me to?”
“Oh, please!” groaned Silas. “If this isn’t the most blatant beguilement I’ve ever—”
Nameless thrust a hand over Silas’ mouth.
“You certainly possess rare talents,” he said in a voice tinged with bashfulness.
Ilesa drew herself up to her full height—which was a tad below Nils’s shoulder now.
“I can track, hunt, and kill,” she said, her hands casually resting on the hilts of her weapons.
Silas mumbled something beneath Nameless’ hand. It sounded like “Cook and sew?” to Nils but he couldn’t be sure.
“Only thing is,” said Ilesa, “I don’t come cheap.”
“No,” said Nameless. “I don’t suppose you do; but I’ve a pouch of gold and a gladdened heart so name your price.”
Ilesa held out her hand.
“Five Dupondii now, five more when we get back.”
Nils scoffed out loud.
“Done,” said Nameless fishing about in his pocket and slapping the coins in her palm. “On the condition, mind, that you stay just the way you are.”
“Sorry, it’s time limited,” said Ilesa, “but I’ll do the best I can.”
“Hmm,” said Nameless. “Can’t say fairer than that.”
The dwarf’s good mood was starting to get under Nils’s skin. He almost wished they’d get a move on. Surely Qlippoth couldn’t be any worse than this.
“Welcome aboard,” said Silas in a feeble voice. He proffered his hand to Ilesa and then turned aside to vomit.
Ilesa wrinkled her nose and sidled up to Nameless.
“Shall we?” she said, taking his arm.
Nameless’ grin spread from ear to ear.
“Indeed we shall.”
Nameless and Ilesa left Silas doubled over beside the road and skipped towards the looming iron gate that marked the edge of town. It was as if the dwarf had dropped a heavy burden and found a new wellspring of youth.
Nils shifted the weight of Nameless’ pack on his back and hefted the axe with both hands. He cast a longing look over his shoulder as he trudged after his new companions—not so much at Malfen, with its spew of ugly dwellings, but at the fractured gorges and rocky outcrops; the swathes of green and the distant plains that marked the outermost reaches of Malkuth—the only home he’d ever known.
Tears streaked his face as he turned to his companions and lumbered after them towards the wastelands of the Cynocephalus’s nightmares.
THE AXE OF THE DWARF LORDS
THE AXE OF THE DWARF LORDS
Face down in pig shite, covered from head to foot in it, weren’t exactly the heroic stand Nils would have rightly liked to take, but like Ilesa said, it was better than the alternative.
It was all right for her. Nils would have given his back teeth to be able to change shape like she did. One minute she was there in all her curvy glory, all leather and flesh, and then she turned herself into one of ’em. He’d have chanced a look, but the thought of getting his arse bitten off by a walking corpse weren’t encouraging him none.
“Hey, pig-boy, seems to be working,” Ilesa stage-whispered. “They’re wandering off.”
Felt like Nils’s brain was being sucked out his ear when he turned his head and the shite didn’t want to let him go. Her back was still to him, but she made him gag all the same. Big strips of grey flesh hung from her bones, all slicked over with pus and stuff he didn’t want to think about.
“Some tracker you turned out to be. Thought we were looking for dwarves, not these … What the shog are they?” Nils asked, fighting the cloying muck so he could stand.
“Zombies, I’d say. Brau said he’d seen them out past the village, but this is a first for—What are you doing? Did I tell you to move? Now look what you’ve done. They’re turning round.”
“Weren’t my fault,” Nils said. “You’re the one with the big mouth.”
Ilesa looked like she was gonna say something, but then went stiff as a corpse and went back to pretending she was one. Thankfully they were real slow, shambling mounds of rotting flesh. Trouble was, there were a lot of them. A heck of a lot, and they had Nils surrounded. His guts were roiling and his bladder
was fit to burst. When the zombies started moaning and reaching their arms out like blind folk trying to find a doorknob, Nils reckoned he’d made a mistake crossing the Farfalls. Not that he’d had much of a choice. Shogging dwarf had seen to that.
“Get back down,” Ilesa hissed, just loud enough for Nils to hear. “Shit’s the best chance you’ve got. Doubt they’ll see you in the muck, and they sure won’t smell you.”
“Where the shog’ve Nameless and Silas got to?” Nils whined like he used to back home when he thought something weren’t fair. “How long’s it take to have a piss for crimeney’s sake?”
“Shut…up.”
“Shut up yourself, you…Oh, crap!”
Nils threw himself facedown in the shite, cursing himself for a stupid numbskull. Shogging zombies had near enough crept up on him, and all ’cause he and the bitch couldn’t stop arguing. Women, his dad would have said. All the world’s problems in a nutshell. If it hadn’t be for Ilesa, they wouldn’t have come waltzing into the village in the first place. Her and Silas, in any case. Maybe if the wizard weren’t so precious about pissing in the bush they’d have left this dump well alone. Shog, Qlippoth was meant to be stuffed full of nightmares. Didn’t take a genius to figure out that towns and the like were no-go areas. If you asked him—
A foot squelched down in the muck beside his head. Nils didn’t want to look, but his eyes had a life of their own. Whole leg was rot all the way to the knee, which was about as far as he could see from his belly. Weeping ulcers and peeling black skin. Whole thing was so full of pus it looked ready to burst, like overripe fruit. The other foot came down, narrowly missing his ear. Something splashed the back of Nils’s neck and he choked back puke. His heart bounced around in his ribcage so hard he thought it might shoot out of his back. All he could do was lie still and hope it hadn’t noticed him, hope it moved on. One flayed leg lifted and a chunk of putrid flesh flopped off into the shite right by Nils’s mouth, so close he could almost taste it. The zombie stepped over him and lurched away, and Nils took the opportunity to roll to his side and look for Ilesa.
“Crap,” he whispered under his breath, fighting back tears of panic. She was lost amid a sea of lumbering dead flesh. Her disguise was so good he couldn’t pick her out from the dozens of walking corpses shambling about the smallholding.
“Ilesa,” he said as loud as he dared. “Where are you?”
A chorus of moaning went up from the zombies, and scores of milky eyes turned on him.
“Ilesa!” he called, his voice quavering like it did whenever he got caught with his hand in the cash drawer and Dad took his belt off. Not ’cause he didn’t approve of the stealing, course, but because Nils had got himself caught.
“Quiet!” Ilesa whispered back. Only it was a bit loud to be a useful whisper. Loud enough to draw some attention away from Nils.
A cluster of zombies turned on one of their own, filthy fingers grasping, pawing, thumping.
“Aargh,” the zombie in the middle cried. “My shogging tooth!” It spat blood and the air shimmered around it, dead flesh becoming firm and olive hued. Dank hair grew into satin locks, and tattered rags turned to a leather laced-up corset and breeches. Ilesa’s thumb and forefinger fumbled about in her mouth and came away with a pink-stained tooth. “That’s just great,” she inveighed. “Shogging great.”
She’d only half drawn her sword when the zombies surged over her and she went down screaming. Nils just reacted on instinct and legged it the other way, but he ran straight into cold, stinking flesh. Icy hands wrapped around his throat, lifting him into the air. He wriggled and squirmed, coughed and spluttered, but no matter how hard he fought, he was helpless in the zombie’s grasp. A cold tongue ran up the side of his face, then he caught a whiff of rancid breath as teeth latched onto his earlobe. His struggles got weaker and weaker, and his vision blurred until it seemed he entered a dark tunnel that started to close in on him.
Don’t let it end like this, his oxygen-starved mind threw up. Please don’t let it…How had it come to this? Where were Nameless and Silas? Please Daddy, don’t let it—
Air whistled past his face and there was a sound like the pulping of a melon.
***
“Come on, come on,” Nameless muttered through clenched teeth as he shuffled about nervously on the porch of the ramshackle cottage. He didn’t like the feel of this village one little bit. Ilesa had some ken of it from Jankson Brau, the wizard who’d tried to have Nameless and Nils killed on their way to Malfen. She said the dwarves would have passed this way unless they wanted to chance the moors to the east, where Brau had lost a dozen men to the quagmires, or found a way to cross the inland sea to the west. Apart from that, she’d said, Qlippoth was unmappable, shifting like the sand on a churning seabed; like the vistas in a dream.
“One foot over the shogging border and he needs to piss,” Nameless grumbled under his breath. Couldn’t deny the fact he needed a dump himself, though. Accursed place gave his bowels a life of their own, but there was no way he was about to drop his breeches and squat down. The unruly grass around the shack was undulating under the weight of a thousand insects, each the size of a small bird. They had carapaces like plate armour and pincers that looked like they could snip through bone, or worse.
Silas had refused to go on the trail as they’d been amongst a scattering of dwellings overflowing from Malfen like crap from a cesspit. Someone might see, he’d complained. Nils and Ilesa had wandered off to a smallholding, hoping to find someone who could sell them something to eat. Why anyone would want to live this side of Malfen was beyond him. He turned his nose up at the dilapidated buildings dotting the plain, then shook his head and glared at the door of the cottage.
The place was more lichen than wood. Its broken timbers were coated in green and yellow fluff that gave off a stench like rotting vegetables. Unless that was Silas’s business he could smell. Its two narrow windows were boarded up and there was a rusty metal pipe jutting from the roof that presumably served as a chimney. The roof itself was mainly exposed rafters, the few remaining tiles hanging like scabs. The garden was all brown leaves and briars with sickle-shaped thorns.
Nameless shivered and jumped on the spot. “Come on Silas, come on.”
This was getting ridiculous. How long did it take for shog’s sake? He’d kill the shogging shogger if he was in there taking tea with the woman who’d answered the door. Sweet old lady, Nameless thought. All hunched over in her shawl. What she was doing out here in the Dark Side of Aethir he’d love to know. What she was doing living in such a rundown, moss covered, scorpion-infested hovel was a mystery, too. If he’d been asked to imagine who might have lived in such a hole he’d have had to say a ...
“Witch!” bellowed Nameless snatching up his axe.
He bounded up the three steps to the porch in one leap and crashed straight through the rotten wood of the door.
It was dark and dusty in the entrance hall. Thick cobwebs draped down like curtains, and the corridor straight ahead was choked with them, so much so that it was obvious no one had been down there for years. The stairs were another matter. They were relatively clear, although a dark and viscous fluid had splashed onto them. Nameless sniffed as he started to climb, praying his foot wouldn’t go straight through the rotten wood. There was a sickly, coppery smell coming from the spillage which made him hurry to the top.
He’d barely made the landing when a shadow detached itself from the wall and leapt at him. There was a flurry of fangs and claws, a hissing snarl and the fetid smell of decaying flesh. Then there was the crunch of axe cleaving bone and the shadow being grunted and dropped to the floor. As Nameless wrenched the axe blade clear, the creature started to shimmer and change until the old lady lay on the floor with her head split in two.
Nameless exhaled sharply, hefted his axe and ambled through the open door to what was presumably the hag’s bedchamber. There, manacled to an iron bedstead atop a mildewed mattress was Silas Thrall. He was stripped naked
and shivering. A wide damp patch spread across the mattress from his groin. His clothes were jumbled on the floor. The black leather grimoire lay open atop his bag. Nameless had an overwhelming urge to leave Silas for a minute and examine the book.
“Thank Ain,” Silas said, rattling his chains. “Another minute and she’d...and she’d...”
“You hurt?” Nameless asked. “There was blood on the stairs.”
Silas shook his head. “Some other poor bastard, I expect. Hellfire, Nameless, she was going to …”
Nameless held up a rigid finger like a chastising father.
“First day across the border. First step practically, and you have to stop to shag a wrinkly.”
Silas shook his head frantically and struggled against his bonds.
“No, it’s not what it seems. She was a witch. A real life witch, I tell you. Surprised me with her magic and landed me here.”
Nameless wasn’t listening. He stooped to look at the book.
“Ah, yes,” Silas said. “She was after the grimoire, you can be sure of that. The minute she opened my bag she was flicking through it.” He licked his lips. “You can’t read Aeternam, can you?”
“A little,” Nameless said, shutting the book so he could see the cover. The embossed letters danced before his eyes and he could no longer focus on them without feeling nauseous. He retched and straightened up, glowering at Silas. The mage looked away nonchalantly.
“Hmm,” Nameless growled and turned towards the doorway.
“Wait,” Silas said. “You’re not going to leave me?”
Nameless was sorely tempted.
“I’ll be back,” he said above the rattling of the wizard’s manacles. “But first I need to impart a gift to the good woman’s latrine. Be warned, I think this is going to take a very long time.”
“Set me free first ...”
“Thought you were a great wizard.” Nameless went inside the toilet and shut the door. He loosened his breeches and gave a huge sigh as he sat down. “Don’t you have a degree in escapology or something?”