by Sean Rodden
Death was come. He would go peaceably. And in pieces.
Shar’eth… you will receive me soon, my love.
The flat of the Darad’s axe swept the ancient giant’s legs from beneath him. The shaman of shamans crashed ignobly upon his back to the rocky ground, his head striking a protuberant stone with a thunderous crack. Dark blood gushed. Cranial fetishes shattered. The air left his lungs. His sight clouded, shrouded, abounding with tiny lights, a stelliferous sea of blood and shadow. Sharp pain came and went. He sensed someone, something, standing above him, an entity enveloped in smoke and flame, in a ghostfire of illimitable heat and hate, and he heard the terrible being laugh. And then, in a final flash of unsolicited lucidity, Umbar’hal’s sight swam into intense focus, severe and extreme – but all he saw was a crimson axe careering down.
So he closed his eyes.
The sound was like nothing any of the combatants had ever before heard. Deafening, resounding. Thunder rolled in the rock. The sky quaked. A thousand eardrums burst. The blast was similar to that of a meteor colliding with the earth, the concussive force of which blew the surrounding warriors flat in all directions, leaving them prostrate and unmoving, reminiscent of the vast and mysterious ring of felled trees in the wintry heart of the Nothiric taiga. Lightning flashed, fire flared, and the all the world became blurred shades of blue and red.
Dulgar felt the shuddering impact of his two-fisted strike in his hands, his arms, shoulders, in every bone of his bulking body. The closest thing to pain he had ever known. He could not see for the whirling dust and ash and earth that encased him; he could not hear for the storm in his ears; he could not feel for the hyper-stimulation of his entire being. But as the dust settled, and sensation slowly returned to skin and sinew, the roaring storm weakened, withdrew and went away.
And the Wild One heard –
“Not this one, Stone Lord.”
The Darad’s war-axe had been intercepted by the flanged crown of a massive mace mere inches above the prone Graniant’s exposed throat. The weapon was enormous, wrought of solid cobalt-blue steel, both head and handle, and must have weighed several hundred pounds. Yet its titanic wing-haired wielder held the long haft in one hand, close to the end, arm fully extended, and in that precarious position had exerted sufficient strength to withstand a two-handed rage-fueled axe-swing from one of the mightiest Daradur ever Made.
Incredible. Or rather –
Impossible. Even Drogul isn’t that fuckin’ strong!
“No more.”
The voice was soft, soothingly so, and sounded quite incongruous coming from one so dark and so powerful. The grey giant’s glowing white eyes regarded Dulgar with neither wrath nor loathing, nor any suggestion of antipathy, but only a queer and quiet confidence, calm and assured. The ribbons of the ’Spawn’s cloak floated out behind him like great black pinions, hovering on thermal waves of power originating in his person, his very presence. The crisscrossed copper and silver sashes over his heart shone like starfire.
“No more,” repeated the Prince of the Bloodspawn. “Enough.”
Dulgar attacked.
A flurry of howling fury, scarlet blades whirring through the grey air, hewing, hacking, assailing the great grey giant from everywhere and nowhere. A ferocious assault that should ripped the towering ’Spawn to shreds, should have chopped him into chunks of steaming meat – should have, but did not. For each brutal blow was either blocked or evaded, deflected or circumvented. A lethal swing to the stomach was perfectly parried; a slice to the knee was lithely leapt above; a punch to the groin gracefully sidestepped; a backhanded swipe at the ankle caught and turned aside. Dulgar pressed harder, faster, closer. About the two adversaries was a whorl of crimson and brilliant blue, punctuated by peals of thunder and jagged javelins of blinding white energy. The defense became desperate. Fraught and frantic. And the giant’s fate seemed sealed and certain as the Wild One roared like an angry god of war and in a concentrated burst of pure rage surged in for the kill.
But then Kor ben Dor countered. And countered well.
The Halflord dodged a blow, blocked another, struck, struck again, spun, punched. The Darad staggered back, bleeding profusely from the nose. The Halflord did not relent. He swung hard, stepped back to elude, attacked from one side, then from the other, then twisted nimbly, kicked. Dulgar stumbled back, doubled over. Kor ben Dor persisted. The mace-crown crashed down again and again and again. The Stone Lord buckled, absorbing blow after blow on his axe-haft and vambraces. And then the Halflord whirled about, swung his monstrous weapon with both hands and hammered its heavy head with full force directly into the Wild One’s naked chest, propelling him ten, twenty, thirty paces through the crisp and crackling air.
The Captain of the mara-Waratur hit the ground hard, toppling and tumbling over the fallen forms of dead and unconscious Graniants, then rolled to a halt and rose to his feet. The lurid imprint of steel flanges marked his broad breast, and blood flowed freely from a dozen horrid wounds. His lone eye burned like a dead star. His mind raced, his soul raged. No one was that fast, that strong. Not without supernatural enhancement. And he could feel immense eldritch power emanating from the giant in one continuous unremitting swell.
Ugly-ass mudfucker isn’t fighting fair.
And so the Wild One called upon the Maiden within him, upon the elemental energy in the earth beneath his feet, upon the Mother herself to restore the balance. His plea did not go unheard. Primal puissance poured into him, surged through him, blazed from him. Cuts closed, wounds healed. The glimmer of ghostly flame danced on the hot blood seeping from his empty eye socket. The haft of his war-axe smoked and sizzled in his huge gnarled fists.
Past bared and gritted teeth, the garun-tar growled –
“All you’ve done is gone and pissed me right fucking off, Halffucker.”
The head of Kor ben Dor’s mace thudded to the ground. Stone-dust puffed upward from the brunt. The great grey giant folded his muscled arms before him and leaned on the butt of the weapon. Sweat glistened on his skin like liquid silver. Steam streamed steadily from his nostrils. His milk-white eyes glowed with a most malapropos calm.
“‘Halffucker.’” The Prince’s lips twitched. “That is new.”
Somewhere behind him, Umbar’hal stirred, sat up. The witch-doctor groaned, clasping one hand to the back of his head to stem the stubborn trickle of blood. He could hear nothing but a sound similar to that of rushing water, gushing it seemed right within his ears. His sight was bleary and blurred, and all he could perceive were vague shapes, pastel clouds perforated by dancing specks of muted light. He felt strong hands hook under his arms and heave him to his feet, and he made an effort to smile through blood and pain as a pair of familiar Black Shields led him away, one to a shoulder. The roar of water in his head quieted just enough for him to hear his rescuers gasp. Some smiles, it was true, should never be seen.
“For someone about to get fuckin’ obliterated, you’re pretty fuckin’ content about it. Your life fuckin’ suck or something, giant?”
Breathmist veiled the slight tremor of a sad smile. “At times, yes.” An evocative pause. “But no longer.”
Dulgar stepped forward, beginning to narrow the distance between himself and Kor ben Dor. His war-axe whirred in warning at his side.
“Hold.”
The Darad slowed, appeared to hesitate for a moment, but then continued.
“Hold, Stone Lord,” reiterated the Prince. One muscular arm swept outward to indicate the vast vista of war about them. “Hold and behold.”
Surprisingly, the Wild One did stop then, and the malicious motion of his weapon stilled. He scowled as he looked around. Beyond the flattened forest of insensate enemy forms, the battle for Doomfall had ceased completely. All combatants had discontinued their own killing and dying so that they might bear incredulous witness to the bout between legends. The silence of awe had descended upon the battlefield, an aged burial garment, moth-eaten and tattered, susurrant with the
whispers of a thousand spiders.
“Enough.”
Dulgar glared back the Halflord. “No fuckin’ way.” His war-axe squealed in the tightness of his grip. “Never fuckin’ enough.”
“Enough.”
The blood-smeared Darad snarled, but said nothing.
“Enough death this day, Stone Lord.” The Prince’s voice was disarmingly soft, infuriatingly serene. “I will withdraw the Blood King’s forces, and you may return to your Lord unhindered and unharmed – no more, at least, than you already have been.”
“You didn’t fuckin’ hurt me, giant. Not even a fuckin’ scratch.”
The Halflord disregarded the Darad’s denial, had he heard him at all.
“I came here for Doomfall, not for you. I will have it. But no more lives need be lost in the having, Stone Lord. No more sacrifices need be made here. Not this day. Death will come to us all in time – we need neither abet nor accelerate its unseemly inevitability.”
“You’re fuckin’ serious?”
“Yes. I will quit this field, and this army with me. But come the morrow’s dawn I will meet your master at the mouth of Doomfall. And together he and I shall decide this war.”
Dulgar stared, his solitary eye flashing with fire and the desire to destroy. He did not otherwise respond.
“Tell him, Stone Lord.”
The Prince of the Bloodspawn turned away then, uncowed and unbowed, the streamers of his cloak fluttering a silent farewell.
Dulgar growled, rage ripping through him as would an unholy inferno. But he did not follow, he did not give chase, did not charge. The challenge had been extended to Drogul, and to Drogul alone – and Drogul alone could give answer. Not even the Wild One would interfere with such a venerable and binding tenet of war.
Gnashing his teeth, the Darad loosened his grasp of his war-axe, lowered its bleeding blades to the stone at his feet.
And then, like an echo, one last wisp of words on the wind –
“Tell him.”
Oh, I fucking will.
Alone atop the rocky tor, Urchin felt a festering pique pass.
Clever, yes, very clever. The Halflord means to win this war with a single death. A battle of champions for the pass of Doomfall. Behead the dragon, steal its fire, watch it die, then claim its den. And retain the army, reasonably intact, for the unhindered conquest of the High Land. How deliciously devious! Clever, very clever, Kor ben Dor, clever, clever, clever!
The Leech snickered, sniggered.
And to think I was beginning to doubt you.
Drogul the kirun-tar watched as the Halflord walked away from the Wild One. The entire army of the Blood King turned with the towering warrior, withdrawing in an orderly and unhurried manner, carrying their wounded with them, abandoning their dead – more a retracing of steps than an actual retreat. A retirement from the field. And the Mighty One knew why. Tell him. But Drogul did not need to be told. He had been watching, had been listening. He had seen. And he had heard. The lot of Doomfall was to be determined in one final fatal meeting of the mightiest. A first and last conclusive clash between the reigning gods of war.
The Mighty One grunted, shrugged, and moved away.
Of a time, and to a friend, he had said –
Doomfall will hold.
So it would.
13
UGLOCH NUR
“There is fire in the Earth,
and should you delve overdeeply,
you are certain to be burned.”
Carving on the Westwall, attributed to the Daradur
Rundul of Axar felt the rock form beneath his feet, the whoosh of air filling his lungs, sensed the tethers connected to his consciousness snapping, falling away. The damp smell of cold stone niggled his nostrils, interfused with the bitter after-scent of abomination. He pushed the stubborn stink from his nose, gritted his teeth, and tightened his grip on his war-axe. The lids of his eyes virtually creaked as he forced them open.
Urth ru Glir! It worked!
He had survived the perilous path of the Gaddagorth, the Way of Darkest Night. Intact, and apparently no worse for the trek.
Nevertheless, he still would have much preferred the Way of Sunshine and Bunnies.
The Captain of the Wandering Guard stood upon a stone ledge in the deeps of the netherearth, far beneath the foundations of New Ungloth. Before him was a colossal and vaguely circular cavern, the apex of its vaulted ceiling soaring several hundred feet above an unevenly tiered floor that winded downward toward a large dais at the nadir. This central platform was carved of a single slab of clouded crystal, within which purled ribbons of bloodlight, eerie red serpents swimming in a silty sea. Suspended from the ceiling was a chaotic but complex network of translucent tubing, long thin conduits crisscrossing back and forth, entangling, entwining, like the nest of a subterranean species of giant spider theretofore unknown. Dozens of these tubes dangled downward, some drooping loosely, others attached to the back and arms of a single enormous chair set atop the dais. The chair itself was formed of corpses in several stages of decay, some skeletal, others retaining flesh but shrivelled and dried, still others plump and bloated and oozing unseemly fluids – all plaited and woven together like some macabre wickerwork, twisted and ghoulish.
A throne. Empty now. Forsaken, abandoned.
The grim grey Fian appeared to one side of the Darad; the dark Prince of the Neverborn shimmered into existence at the other. Both were whole and hale, though the Way of Darkest Night promised to ever be with them, the shadow of their shadows, cold and black at their backs, always there but never seen.
“Is this the place, Stone Lord?” The oiled iron of Eldurion’s voice carried a resonance of relief, like the fading vibrations of a violently struck tine. His eyes flashed as they swept over the subterranean coliseum and its atrocious chair. “The place where you first beheld the Blood King’s army?”
Rundul grunted, maneuvering out of the straps of his pack. “It is, Fian.”
“And is that – ?”
The Throne of Bone? “None other.”
“This theatre is very much as you described at the Stone of Scullain in Hollin Tharric,” Yllufarr observed quietly. His pale eyes glimmered. “The memory of terrible atrocity lingers here. An obscure legacy of immoral thoughts and evil deeds. A ghost of blood hovers in the air – I can taste it.”
“They were floating there.” Rundul waved a hand toward the web of tubing. “Hundreds of them. Unmen mostly, but some Urkroks, a handful of humans of the nastier variety, even a few Graniants. All of them suspended by sorcery, those hoses in their necks, in their arms, their blood transfusing into that awful thing – ”
“ – where sat the Red Wraith,” interposed Eldurion quietly. “He was… feeding. Consuming the blood and the life forces of hundreds, all at once. I see it painted in my mind. It is so vivid. So real. And so very foul.”
“Better them than us, Fian,” rumbled the Darad, rummaging through his pack. “I’m sure not going to tug my beard too hard over it.”
The Sun Lord looked upon the Captain, his head cocked slightly. “What do you seek, friend Rundul?”
“Rope. There’s only the one way down.”
Eldurion eyed four great arched entrances to the arena, one to each primary direction. The aged Fian frowned. “There are passages that lead there, Stone Lord. Surely the troop of Unmen you followed here did not descend on ropes.”
Rundul withdrew a large coil of heavy steel cable from the pack.
“Plenty of passages, Fian. All well-warded by sentries and glyphs, and none of them exactly direct.” He retrieved an odd-looking metallic mechanism and worked it in his strong hands. “And the troop I tracked were intercepted at some point and escorted here under guard. They were taken by the Blood Mages.” Without looking up from his task, the Darad jerked his head toward the nest of tubes. “They wound up there.”
There was a whisper of silence in the bloodlight of the cavern. Impressions of pain and dreams of death.
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“Oft is it safer to remain oblivious,” mused the Prince of the Neverborn, “than it is to be privy to a secret.”
Rundul guided the cable through a sturdy steel loop at his belt, then attached the end to the mechanism. He carefully inspected the wall of rock with his eyes and hands, his fingertips tapping here and there, callused palms pressing flat in places. He soon nodded to himself, decided upon a specific crevice in the wall, wedged the mechanism into the crack, cranked it tight, and tested the grasp of steel on stone with a series of strong pulls on the cable. He then turned back to his pack, securing the clasps closed and attaching the other end of the cable to a steel ring before looking at his companions.
“Nothing down there, right?”
Eldurion’s hood swiveled from side to side, slowly, silently. Within the close of his cowl the glint of his eyes was tinted orange by the florid halflight.
“Nothing save echoes and remembrances,” replied the Sun Lord. “The place is utterly deserted.”
“Not for long,” Rundul said gruffly.
He heaved his pack over the edge of the ledge, the cable sliding smoothly and steadily through his hard hands, its bulky burden eventually settling to the floor of a stone tier several stages above the crystalline dais. The excess length of the cable coiled about the bundle like a dragon guarding its hoard.
The Darad gestured to the Ath. “You first.”
“Should I not remain to release the anchor from the stone?”
“Not necessary. I’ve got that covered.” Another gesticulation, somewhat impatient this time. “Stand there, take hold of the cable here.”
“Unnecessary, friend Rundul,” Yllufarr echoed wryly, drawing his hood about his head. “I have this covered.”