Revenge of the Lich (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 3)

by D. P. Prior

  “What, lassie? What is it?”

  Ilesa squatted down in front of the dwarf. “Remember what I said about being immune to bites from wolf-men?”

  Nameless nodded, his brown eyes kind and cheery in the sunlight.

  “I’ve seen them before. Back when I never knew I had this… thing.” She looked at her arm, where Nameless had stitched her up and put a bandage over the top. “A pack must have found a way across the Farfalls. They came down through the Fells, slaughtered the villagers just outside of Arnk. The good people of Arnk drove them off with fire and spears, and that’s when they came hunting for food in Portis. A lot of people died that day. Big shogger broke into our house. The bastard—my father—ran out the back door, left me and my brother to it. Davy hid behind me, but it threw me to the floor, bit through my shirt.” She lifted her bodice to show Nameless the puckered white scar just above her hips.

  Nameless was watching her intently, willing her to go on, it seemed.

  “Would have ripped my throat out. Should have done, only I got so scared it made me angry, and then it happened—I turned into one of them. Before I knew it, my jaws were clamped around its neck, and I bit its head clean off. Must have spooked the hell out of the others, because they just up and offed and we never saw hide nor hair of them again. Course, the bastard had to come back at that moment with his harpoon, make out he was trying to save us. He saw everything that happened.”

  “Leaving you the hero of the day, eh?”

  Ilesa snorted at that. “Maresmen came next, to do the clean up. Folk that weren’t killed outright by the wolf-men had to be put down. Within days, they started to change. Problem was, I’d been bitten, and I didn’t change. On top of that, the bastard told everyone what he’d seen. They reckoned I could turn at will. Said it was some kind of witchcraft, the sort of thing they didn’t want in their town, if you know what I mean. They shopped me to the Maresmen, but I got away.”

  Nameless looked lost in thought. The change in his mood was palpable, like a cloud covering the faces of the suns.

  “Only, it wasn’t magic, lassie, was it?”

  “Master Plaguewind—my old guild boss—said it was husk blood. Said my mother must have been from Qlippoth.”

  “I ran into a husk once, on the way to New Londdyr,” Nameless said. “Big scary wyrm with the body of a man and the head of a bull.”

  “Guess that makes me a freak in your eyes.” Ilesa wouldn’t have expected anything less. Isn’t that how everyone saw her? Brau only put up with her because her abilities were useful.

  “No more than a dwarf without a name.” Nameless rubbed his beard and offered her a half-smile.

  Ilesa stood and turned to stare at the shore, wondering what had happened to Nils.

  That had been the last time she’d seen little Davy. She felt her jaw tighten, at the same time battening down the hatches that had flooded her with unwanted recollections. Last thing she’d done, before fleeing to New Londdyr, was to make sure Davy couldn’t be hurt again. Not by that pig. Not ever.

  A splash drew her attention, and she pointed to where the serpent’s head poked up above the water, glaring at them with amber eyes.

  “There, just like I told you.”

  “Still say there’s not enough time,” Nameless said.

  “Look, dwarfy, I just told you a whole lot of shit no one else has heard. I’m not happy about that, but it does tell me one thing. Maybe I’m starting to trust you. Now why don’t you do the same?”

  Nameless looked deep into her eyes and bunched his shoulders up to his cauliflower ears. “Maybe because you forgot to mention you only came along for the bounty.”

  She held his gaze, a familiar coldness settling over her. So, it had come to this, and just when she was starting to reconsider.

  “Not as stupid as you look, are you?”

  “Guess that would be hard, lassie. Only thing that baffles me is why you haven’t done it already. Did Brau ask you to tag along, see what we found first, hoping you’d bring back some loot as well as my corpse?”

  Ilesa took a step back, hands falling to the handles of her sheathed weapons. “Actually, he said just your head would do, but yeah, he thought you might actually find these dwarves of yours. Now Shent’s out of the way, Brau’s planning on taking over Malfen, and he reckons he’s owed a toll.”

  Nameless nodded, looking down at his hands curled about the haft of his axe. “Only, this place doesn’t stay the same for long, so even if we found the dwarves, and assuming they stayed put, you’d never be able to lead Brau to them.” A laugh rolled its way up from his belly. “Seems Brau suffers from overconfidence. What do you think a rogue like him could do against a few hundred dwarves?”

  “Reckon you just got lucky at The Grinning Skull. Brau’s not the only wizard in his band. He picked up the survivors of the Dybbuks from New Londdyr. Most of them are spellcasters.”

  Nameless frowned. “Dybbuks?”

  “My old guild,” Ilesa said. “Before that shogger Shadrak put paid to them.”

  Nameless’s eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. “Shadrak the Unseen? Little fellow, white as a sheet?”

  Ilesa seethed at the memory. “That’s him. Friend of yours?”

  “Well,” Nameless said. “Well, yes.”

  “Shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose. Took us out one at a time, and it didn’t matter what we did, how many traps we laid, he always seemed one step ahead of us. I tell you, that shogger has some weird powers of his own. We were the best of the guilds back then. No one messed with us, and yet he came like a ghost in the night and tore us apart.”

  Nameless chuckled. “That’s Shadrak for you.”

  “I’m glad you find it amusing. I lost a lot of good friends to that piece of shit. Lot of good friends.”

  Nameless pushed down on his axe and stood. “Yes, well, we’ve all done bad things, lassie. Me more than most.” He drew in his lips, gave her a lingering look, and then stepped down toward the water’s edge.

  “So, where’s that leave us?” Ilesa said.

  His back was to her when he answered. “You still plan to kill me?”

  Truth was, she hadn’t given it much thought since… since she’d believed he’d perished going over that cliff. Since he’d returned and made Silas heal her before she became one of the living dead. Since he’d refused to leave her to the wolf-men.

  “Brau was always a shogger. Never liked him. I was just waiting for the day when I could cut his throat and put the guild back together.” Give Master Plaguewind something to be proud of, so that when she came across his shade in the Abyss, she could tell him she’d done good, left him some sort of legacy. He was an evil bastard, Plaguewind, but he’d been good to her, and he certainly hadn’t deserved to die like he did, holes blasted in him by Shadrak’s strange wands. And he hadn’t deserved to be abandoned by Ilesa, either, when she’d fled in the form of a cockroach. “You’ll be all right with me, OK?”

  Nameless nodded.

  Ilesa walked down beside him, watching the shadowy form of the serpent glide past beneath the surface. “Can’t make the same guarantees if I see your mate Shadrak again, though.”

  “Understood,” Nameless said. “So, lassie, you ready to try this harebrained plan of yours?”

  Ilesa couldn’t be sure. It may have been the rising breeze whipping through his clothes, but she thought the dwarf was trembling.

  “First thing Master Plaguewind taught me was, you can never have enough planning. We watch it again and again, till we’re certain.”

  “Sounds like a sensible fellow, this Plaguewind. Was he a dwarf?”

  Ilesa mulled it over. Was sensible the right word? Plaguewind had been a meticulous planner, which accounted for the Dybbuks’ preeminence among the guilds. The only problem was, he’d been blindsided by his arrogance, and hoodwinked by the fat poisoner, Albert. It had proven a fatal mistake.

  The serpent thrashed about in the water to the back of the island, and Ilesa too
k a deep breath.

  “Ready?” she said to Nameless. “You count this time.”

  NILS

  “Right bleedin’ pickle you landed yourself in, Fargin,” Nils muttered, glancing from the unconscious dwarf to the trees.

  He was sure they’d shifted positions, though he wouldn’t have sworn an oath on it. Shadows flitted through the upper branches, but that could have been the clouds passing in front of the suns.

  He uncrossed his legs and rubbed them to get the blood flowing again. Shouldn’t sit on the cold ground, Mom would have said. It’ll give you piles.

  “You’re a plonker, Nils,” he told himself. “Why couldn’t you have just left him?”

  Dad would have done, and no messing. Ilesa and Silas would have done, too. But not Nameless. Mind you, it weren’t so hard being heroic when you had the tools to back it up. Nils had the heart, right enough, but he was starting to think he lacked any real beef. Should have listened to Granny when he was a kid and eaten more. He had fire in his belly, but it was quickly doused as soon as anyone raised a fist to him, let alone a blade. “Let’s face it,” he told himself, “maybe I just ain’t cut out for fighting and the like.” Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a Night Hawk.

  “What you say?” Cairn mumbled. The dwarf’s eyes flickered open, and he instantly winced. “My legs… Can’t move my legs.”

  “That’s because they’re broke, nitwit,” Nils said. “Gaw, what they put in that grog you lot are always supposed to be drinking?”

  Cairn laughed, but his eyes were brimming with tears, the pupils as big as a somnificus smoker’s. “You know dwarves, lad. Aye, you know dwa…” His jaw fell shut, and he turned his face away.

  “Yeah, I know dwarves. Least I know a dwarf. Suppose you’re gonna tell me Nameless ain’t no dwarf no more, are you?”

  “After what he did…”

  Nils pushed himself to his feet and glared. “Way he tells it, it was the axe that made him do it, same as it would’ve anyone else who had it.”

  Cairn bristled at that. “Ah, so it wasn’t his fault. That’s his excuse now, is it? Sorry, everyone I hacked to death, it wasn’t me, it was my axe. I just happened to be holding it.”

  “That ain’t fair, and you know it,” Nils said. He balled his hands into fists and would have hit the shogger… if… if the dwarf’s legs weren’t broke.

  “Don’t much care about fairness,” Cairn said. “World’s not like that. I just look at the facts. Cold hard facts.”

  “But it weren’t—”

  “Wasn’t his fault? Yes, I know, you’ve already said that, but it doesn’t make any difference, far as I’m concerned. You kill my family, I kill yours. That’s what I call fair. I don’t give a shog why you did it, same as fire don’t care why you touch it; it still burns, just the same.”

  Nils leaned over so he could spit his words in Cairn’s face. “Yeah? Well I don’t give a shog why a tree fell on you and broke your bleedin’ legs. Fact is, you can’t walk, and I don’t have to stand here and listen to this shit.”

  “Then don’t,” the dwarf shot back. “I’m not making you. I already told you to leave me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes!”

  Nils pressed his fists into his hips, racking his brain for some clever retort. “Well, shog you, then.” He spun on his heel and took two strides in the direction of the lake.

  “You ever wonder why he’s got no name?” Cairn’s voice was like a blast of frigid air.

  Nils turned, and the dwarf propped himself up on his arms, huffing with the effort.

  “He ain’t got no memory, that’s why.”

  Cairn shook his head, his face taking on a grim set. “He forgot anything else?”

  Nils thought about that. Nameless didn’t like talking about the past, but he’d let a few things slip out. “No. So?”

  “When your friend came back from Gehenna with the black axe and started massacring anyone who got in his way, the Council sought the help of a philosopher.” Cairn spat a glob of phlegm on the ground. “Aristodeus, he was called. Bald bastard, any way you look at it, but he had some tricks up his sleeve that would make a conjurer green with envy. Aristodeus was the one to trap him. Put him in a scarolite helm that was magicked or whatnot. It cut him off from the axe and excised every trace of his cursed name from history. See, some crimes are so evil, they have to be forgotten. Have to.”

  “But you know his real name, right?”

  The dwarf’s eyes glinted and then closed. “No one knows it, far as I can tell. It’s gone. Council says it’s best that way. Best forgotten, like the shogger had never been born.”

  Nils was shaking his head, trying to understand. “That’s dumb,” he said. “How you gonna learn, if you forget what happened?”

  “We’d already learned enough,” Cairn snarled, “centuries ago, when Maldark the Fallen sold us out to Sektis Gandaw, when we almost brought about the Unweaving. We discovered too late the shadow of the Demiurgos upon us. Why do you think dwarves don’t mix with your lot on the surface? Why do you think we hid away in the bowels of the ravine? We can’t trust ourselves to act in the world, lest we once again risk its destruction. Can’t say I like it none. Reckon the Council are too strict about non-involvement, but rules is rules, I say. Don’t have to agree with them, but you have to follow them just the same.”

  Nils was about to protest. He’d seen dwarves in New Londdyr. Well, a dwarf: Rugbeard, the old soak who’d spent most of his time unconscious at the bar in Dougan’s Diner, or Queenie’s, as it was now, where Nils’s dad used to work. But come to think of it, he hadn’t seen any others. Not until the siege, that is.

  “It’s written into our statutes,” Cairn said. “We’re forbidden to act. Already, there are those among us who think we’ve gone too far by fleeing Arx Gravis. Action begets error, they say, and so we must do nothing. There’s no other defense against the wiles of the Demiurgos. Your… friend broke that law when he followed in his brother’s footsteps and went after the black axe. If he hadn’t been a lawbreaker, he’d never have become a butcher.”

  Nameless had a brother? What did Cairn mean he’d followed in his brother’s footsteps?

  The dwarf seemed to read his thoughts. “A scholar. Not a popular profession among dwarves. His name was Lucius, and he was a pupil of Aristodeus. Should never have had dealings with the philosopher, I reckon, but even the Council made exceptions for that bald bastard. It was Lucius who first discovered the references to the Pax Nanorum in our Annals. He’s the one who started it. His quest for the axe constituted a grave act, one that presented the Council with a dilemma. If they did nothing to stop him, one of their own, they would have had to hold themselves complicit. He went into Gehenna to find the black axe, and the Krypteia followed him. They fed him to the seethers. I suppose they thought a lesser action could be justified if it prevented a greater one. Never did they imagine his brother, a stupid soldier, would pick up where he left off.”

  “Nameless ain’t stupid.”

  “Oh, he is. And a whole lot more. He didn’t just do it the once, you know. After his name was taken, he was locked in a cell, and Aristodeus used magic to hold him there. The philosopher wanted him kept alive; said the Butcher was possessed by the axe, but if it could be destroyed, he would become a powerful weapon in the struggle against the Demiurgos. In the meantime, Aristodeus had the axe encased in crystal.

  “About a year later, others came to Arx Gravis, folk fully enmeshed with the world of action. They freed your friend and took him with them. Aristodeus tried to reassure us, said he could use the situation to his advantage.” Cairn snorted his contempt. “Problem was, he was as deceived as the rest of us. When the Butcher returned to the ravine with the black axe restored to him, he was even more powerful than before. This time, the bloodshed didn’t stop, not until there were only a few hundred of us left.” He stared off into the distance, hawked and spat. “If he ever catches up with my people, that shogger will deserve ever
ything he gets, and don’t think for one minute we’ll be sticking to the law, no matter how long the Council deliberates. After what he did, it’d be a crime not to act. I’ll be right there in the front row, making sure he feels everything my wife felt, everything my ma and pa suffered, every last iota of pain.”

  “You do that, and you’ll have me to deal with,” Nils said.

  “Oh, I’m so scared.” Cairn tried to cross his arms and fell back, banging his head on the ground.

  Nils was sorely tempted to clear off and leave the shogger to starve; leave him to the shadows prowling through the upper limbs of the trees. Maybe at dusk, the wolf-men would return and rip his stinking throat out. That’d shut him up, big mouthed, stunted little—

  An unearthly shriek sounded from up on high.

  Nils looked to the branches, saw one of them shake and drop a cloud of pine needles.

  “You see that?” Cairn asked, his face draining of all color. “There’s something in that tree, black as pitch, slitty yellow eyes. You can’t leave me.”

  Nils stared up into the branches, but nothing else moved. He had that feeling again, though, like a hundred pairs of eyes were boring into him. He turned in a circle, scanning the treetops until he grew too dizzy to continue. He backed toward the prone dwarf and crouched down.

  “See anything?” Cairn whispered.

  “Nothing. What you think it was, a monkey?”

  The dwarf thumped him on the shoulder. “Monkey, my beard! Yellow eyes it had, I tell you. It was a demon. Either that, or some sort of goblin.”

  Nils tutted. “Ain’t no such thing as goblins.”

  Demons were another matter, though. Everyone knew there was demons prowling the scummy parts of New Londdyr at night, preying on wealthy bankers and merchants stupid enough to visit those kinds of places. Streetwalkers, his mom called them. Right put the willies up him, they did.