by D. P. Prior
“Shog, Silas. You seriously need a wash.”
Silas made a show of sniffing his armpits. “Think that’s the pot calling the kettle black. After all, you’re the one who keeps getting covered in shit. Are you quite certain you cleaned up properly after the zombies?”
“Funny,” Nils said. “And I thought it was because you were an asshole. Anyhow, listen. I got an ocean they’re gonna blow up that rock face.”
“You’ve got a what?”
“You know. I got the term from you.”
Silas rolled his eyes and sighed. “Notion, you nitwit. You’ve got a notion.”
“That’s what I said.”
Nils crawled round so his feet dangled over the edge.
“What the blazes are you doing?” Silas said.
“Rescuing Nameless, like we should have done already.” Though he hadn’t the foggiest how he was gonna do it. “They’re going to bring that side of the canyon down on him.”
“Blow it up?” Silas said. “But that’s idiotic.”
“Idiotic or not, looks like they mean to do it. I ain’t waiting no longer.”
Nils felt around with the toe of his boot until he found a crevice. He started to lower himself, but Silas put a restraining hand on his arm.
“Not like this,” he said. “Get back up here.”
“But—”
Silas’s eyes flared red. The irises swirled.
Nils was overcome with giddiness. His limbs took on a life of their own and made him climb back up top.
“I am prepared,” Silas said, “for every eventuality.”
He held his palms toward Nils, closed his eyes, and began a low chant. The air shimmered, and the ground shifted.
Nils looked down, and his breath caught in his throat. It wasn’t the ground moving, he realized, it was his feet disappearing and the ground beneath showing through.
“What…? How…?”
“Invisibility.” Silas stepped back. “Now, go on ahead of me, get past the guards, and see if you can free Nameless. I won’t be far behind.”
“Nice plan, brain box, only there’s one problem,” Nils said. “Same one I had when you stopped me just now.” He crept up close as silently as he could.
“What?” Silas said. He hadn’t noticed the movement. He was still looking at the spot Nils had last spoken from.
Nils filled his lungs and shouted, “How we gonna get the chains off?”
Silas squealed and threw his hands up. “Don’t do that. You scared the living shog out of me. And what if they heard you?”
Nils hadn’t thought of that. He slipped back to the edge and had a look. “Nah, they didn’t hear nothing.”
“No thanks to you. It never ceases to astonish me how—”
“Well?” Nils said.
Silas scratched his head then rubbed his chin. “You’re the son of the guildmaster of the Night Hawks. You tell me.”
Nils was taken aback by that. Yes, he was Buck Fargin’s son, but he hadn’t given thieving too much thought of late. Anyhow, he’d been more for climbing and burgling. Lock picking was another thing entirely.
“I don’t shogging know. Ain’t escap… escap… getting out of things more your line of work? You know, conjuring.”
“I am not a prestidigitator!” Silas let out an exasperated sigh and spun round, as if he expected to find the answer behind him in the darkness.
Something squelched, and then a colossal dark mass burst up from the ground and smothered him.
“Gurrgh!” he spluttered. “Gurrrr…”
He was silenced by a slurping, belching, fart of a noise.
“Silas?” Nils cried. “Silas?”
An oozing mound of dung shivered and shook, shuffling first one way then the other, as if trying to locate the source of the noise. That was all the incentive Nils needed to shut up. He only hoped the peat-monster, or whatever it was, couldn’t hear the thunderous pounding of his heart.
Times like this, he knew exactly what his dad would have done, and truth be told, he plain felt like scarpering himself. Only, he couldn’t. Not after the way he’d abandoned Silas to the Ant-Man. Nameless, too, in a way.
It was the bloody Liber Via, making him feel guilty, that’s what it was. The more Silas learned him, the more he read those weird scriptures, the worse he got.
That, and Nameless. He’d seen the dwarf risk himself for others who didn’t even deserve it, time and time again.
Get a grip, Nils Fargin, he told himself. A Night Hawk’s got no need for guilt, and the graveyards are full of wannabe heroes.
But that was Buck Fargin talking, and Nils weren’t nothing like his shogging dad. Not no more.
His sword was in his hand and swinging down at the reeking pile of muck before he had chance to think. Shite splashed his face, and the blade was held fast by living peat. The more Nils pulled, the harder the mass sucked, until the sword was ripped from his grasp.
A brown tendril curled around his boot, started to work its way up his ankle. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but all he could think of was Silas buried beneath all that rotting crap. If Nils didn’t get him out, and get him out soon—
The top of the mound exploded, and a fist punched its way free. Only, it wasn’t Silas’s fist, it was the creepy magical hand. It scuttled clear of the opening it had made, dragging behind it the satchel containing Silas’s book. Shite slid away from the sides of the hole, and Silas’s face emerged, coughing and gasping for air. His nose and mouth were clogged with peat, his hair plastered to his scalp. The mound belched and sucked and gurgled. Silas vomited brown ooze and began to sink back down. Throwing caution to the wind, Nils launched himself up the side of the pile and grabbed a handful of the wizard’s hair.
“Hold on, Silas,” he cried. “Hold on. I’m gonna get you out of there.”
Fine words, and from the heart, but Nils was buggered if he knew how. Already, he was slipping, and the more he tried to find purchase with his boots, the more caked in muck they became.
He felt suction around one of his calves, and then, with a slurp, the creature had drawn his leg into itself, all the way up to the knee. The pressure was agonizing, but with a twist of his torso, Nils was able to keep hold of Silas’s hair.
The magical hand tugged the grimoire from its bag and frantically flicked through the pages before pushing the open book in front of Silas’s squirming face.
Nils saw what it was trying to do and threw all his remaining strength into freeing his leg from the bog-creature and launching himself upward. He splashed about in the slime at the top, dug into it with one hand, and tugged Silas’s head upright with the other.
The wizard spat sludge from his mouth and blinked his eyes into focus. His lips formed the shapes of the words he read on the page—harsh guttural sounds that Nils didn’t recognize. Words that probably shouldn’t be spoken this side of the Abyss.
No sooner had Silas uttered the last syllable, than the mound spasmed and stilled.
The dung covering Nils’s hand hardened, and all over, the creature was drying at an impossible rate.
Silas’s eyes bulged from his head, which looked ready to explode, and then a crack split the casing of dried peat holding him. Hairline fractures spread across the entire surface, and then the whole thing collapsed into a pile of dust.
Nils hung in midair for a split second then slammed into the hard earth with Silas on top of him.
The wizard wheezed as he gulped down air.
Nils pushed him off and got to his feet. Where the peat had touched him, he was outlined in brown, but other than that, he was still see-through. Thankfully, the shite on his clothes had turned to dust, too, and in a matter of moments, he’d brushed himself clean. Still stank like a blocked latrine, but it could’ve been a whole lot worse.
The magical hand scuttled over to Silas and started flicking him on the nose with its forefinger. Silas muttered and groaned, batted it aside, and sat up.
“I’m dying, I’m dy
ing, I’m dying,” he said, examining his chest and belly with his hands.
“You’ll be fine,” Nils said. “It’s Nameless who’s dying, remember?”
Silas rolled to his knees then stood. He seemed momentarily baffled by Nils’s voice coming from thin air. “Nameless! Yes, we must save him.” A strange look passed across his face, and his eyes flared into focus. He bent down to put the book back in its satchel. “But the chains. We still don’t—”
The hand scurried up his trouser leg and started to unbuckle his belt.
“What the blazes are you doing?” Silas yelped. “Get off!”
He took a swipe at it, but it dodged the blow and crawled up to his chest, where it began to unbutton his shirt.
“Think it likes you,” Nils said, suppressing a giggle.
The hand flopped to the ground and started on Silas’s bootlaces.
“Wait,” Silas said. “I think it’s trying to tell me something.”
“That’s what I said.”
Silas reached down and picked up the hand, holding it in front of his face. “No, you cretin. I think it’s telling me it can help free Nameless. Am I right?”
The hand curled into a fist and stuck its thumb up.
“Go on, my friend,” Silas said as he placed it on the edge of the canyon. “Show our disappointing little Night Hawk how it’s done.”
It sped down the cliff face with the agility of a spider.
“Whatever people might say about Blightey’s black magic,” Silas said, “you can’t deny its efficacy.”
“Yeah,” Nils said. “It’s real handy, but what are we supposed to do in the meantime?”
Silas looked down at the scene below. “Follow the hand. Get close to Nameless, and tell him what to expect.”
“Which is what?” Nils asked, lowering himself over the edge and starting to climb down.
Silas looked straight through him, a thin-lipped smile splitting his face like a gash. His eyes were tinged with red, almost as if they were bleeding.
“Prepare to be amazed.”
NAMELESS
“You farted?” one of the sappers asked.
“Shut up,” another said. “You’re the one who drinks Ironbelly’s, you flatulent fat shogger.”
Nameless forced open an eye. He must have drifted off, what with all the excitement. Not that he felt it any. The depression had snuck back in while he slept, and made rousing himself as torturous as getting up on a wintry morning after a drinking contest.
He tried to lift his head but couldn’t. Every muscle was as rigid as stone. The unforgiving coldness of the rock face pressed into his back. He couldn’t get comfortable. His arms were above his head but wouldn’t respond when he willed them to move. Thin and ragged heartbeats sloshed between his ears, a distant reminder that he was alive. His mind was a silted-up lake, each and every thought a twitching fish, slowly suffocating.
Dimly, he became aware of a stinging sensation coming from his wrists, where the manacles had bitten into the flesh. Must have been what stirred him. Pain always did that. Usually, he was grateful for the release, but not this time. He’d sooner have fallen back asleep, never again to wake up.
“Something stinky this way comes,” Stupid chanted over and over. “No matter the light, like a thief in the night.”
“Clear off, idiot,” the first sapper said. “Unless you want an early grave beneath a mountain of rock.”
“’Tis another snare this fool fears, one far graver than the grave.”
The sappers moved away from Nameless and began to pack up their tools. The remaining glass vials were carefully returned to their sack.
“Right, lads,” the old-timer said as he unreeled some fuse wire, “if you’re done, I’ll get him rigged.”
He began fiddling around in a hole by Nameless’s ankle. “Nicely packed, lads. Perfick depth.”
“Only the best for this shogger,” someone growled. “See you back at the shelter, Targ. What you having? Pint of Ironbelly’s?”
“Shog off!”
Nameless felt the blood starting to flow again. He lifted his head to watch the sappers meandering back toward the crowd.
Stupid was pinching his nose shut and fanning the air with his free hand. He hopped in little circles, as if searching the moonlit canyon for some lurking danger.
“Shame to see a dwarf go down this way,” Targ said as he poked an end of fuse wire in the hole next to Nameless’s shoulder. “Remember you as a babe, I do. Remember your old pa bringing you and your brother up singlehandedly after your ma… you know.”
Nameless nodded. The thought of her cut him right to the marrow, even though he’d never laid eyes on her. Perhaps that was why.
“Back afore you was born,” Targ said, “I saw her clobber scores of those goblins that attacked the ravine. Strong woman, Yyalla. Indomitable. I’d like to see the bloke that could take her down.”
“Well, here he is,” Nameless said.
Targ looked him right in the eye. “Don’t you go saying that, son. You’ve got a lot of blood on your hands. Hell of a lot, but you ain’t responsible for her death. Gods of Arnoch, it was your ma’s choice. You or her was all they could save, and she chose you. Least, that’s the way your pa told it.”
She’d died during childbirth. A life for a life, Pa used to say. It was what she’d wanted. If she could have seen the consequences for the dwarves of Arx Gravis, would she have still made the same choice?
“Droom—your pa—told me he pulled you out with his own hands, right after the surgeon made the cut. Your pa was a chipper bloke. Worked the mines together for years, we did. Right there with him, I was, when the gallery collapsed. Some of us was lucky, I suppose. Some wasn’t.”
“Thank you,” Nameless said.
“For what?”
“Remembering.”
“Never forget a mate,” Targ said. “But the thing that gets me, is how I managed to forget the name of my mate’s son.”
“Magic,” Nameless said. That, or something even more incomprehensible. Almost everything he’d forgotten when the scarolite helm had severed his link with the black axe had come back with time, even things he’d sooner have consigned to oblivion. That’s what the bald bastard Aristodeus said would happen. The memory loss was a side effect, apparently, but the taking of his name was an altogether different matter. It was as deliberate and precise as the cut of a surgeon’s scalpel.
“Shog magic,” Targ said. “Dwarf’s name is a dwarf’s name till the day he dies, I reckon. Not saying the Council’s wrong, mind. Crimes like yours have to be punished. Have to. But that ain’t no reason to take your name. Family name’s still good, though. Least they never took that from you.”
“That’s gone, too,” Nameless said.
“Don’t be daft,” Targ said. “It’s… It’s… Shog me for an ale-swilling plonker. It’s on the tip of my tongue. “It’s… No, don’t tell me. It’s…”
“I told you, it’s gone,” Nameless said. In another generation, no one would remember Droom, Yyalla, or Lucius, and their ancestors would now pass into obscurity.
Targ opened his mouth to protest but then dropped his chin to his chest. “Sorry, son. Truly sorry.” He leaned in close and lowered his voice. “Listen, the boys might be a bunch of drunken sots, but they’ve packed these here holes perfick like. Give me a minute, and I’ll rig this rock face to blow so’s you don’t feel a thing. It’s not a lot, I know, but it’s the best I can offer. Reckon I owe old Droom that much.”
Targ finished up and braided the fuse ends into one, then connected them to a spindle of wire beneath a plunger. He gave Nameless a nod and backed away, unreeling the wire as he went.
Something scuttled over Nameless’s boot and clanked the chain holding his ankle. He started, and looked down to see a hand—a disembodied hand—fiddling with the bolt fastening his manacle.
“Out of the frying pan,” Stupid said. “The enemy is prowling round like a roaring dragon!”
&n
bsp; The shackle fell away, and the hand set to work on his other ankle.
There was a rustle of movement to the right, hot breath on his ear, and then a whisper.
“The axe, where’d they take it?”
“Nils?” A strange thrill ran through Nameless’s blood. He was ready to die, so ready, and yet… He frowned and shook his head. There was no one there. Nothing but silvery moonlight reflecting off the canyon wall.
“The thief in the night,” Stupid said. “Nothing good ever comes from bad seeds.”
“Invisible,” Nils said. “So I could get down here. We’re gonna save you, Nameless. Don’t you worry. Hurry now, where’s the axe?”
“Follow me, and I’ll show you,” Stupid said. “An Immortal with no axe is mortal indeed.”
“Watch out for Silas,” Nils said, and then his footsteps moved away.
The hand freed Nameless’s wrist bonds, but he kept his arms raised, holding onto the chains.
“I don’t want this,” he hissed after Nils.
The hand dropped at his feet, flipped onto its back, and beckoned him with a finger. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up—a feeling he’d not had since… since Verusia.
A flaming skull flashed behind his eyes. The skull of Otto Blightey.
For an instant, he felt again the futility of opposing the Lich Lord. If it hadn’t been for Shadrak and his never-full bag, none of them would have returned from the snow-dusted forests. At best, Wolfmalen castle would have been their tomb. At worst, they’d have each been impaled, and left gasping for days.
“Silas,” he muttered under his breath. “What have you done?”
His boot sent the hand spinning through the air. The instant it hit the ground, it tapped out an angry dance then gave the crowd a wide berth as it scuttled after Stupid and the invisible Nils.
Soldiers pushed through to the front of the crowd and began to usher the onlookers toward the shelters.
Grago was engaged in discussion with Targ, who was crouched over the detonator, checking connections. The councilor pointed to Nameless and then turned to look at the crowd, talking all the while.