Geas of the Black Axe (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 2)

by D. P. Prior

  Thumil didn’t even bother to answer as he stepped between the speartips on his way out of the cell.

  “Shog, he’s awake!” someone yelled. “The butcher’s awake!”

  BENEATH THE ARCH

  Two Red Cloaks surged into the cell, spears leveled. For a split second, the Nameless Dwarf thought they were demons. But it was a memory, a fleeting glimpse of horror. They were dwarves sure enough.

  Their resolve ebbed under the great helm’s glare. They both took a step back.

  Three more dwarves slipped through the doorway and moved to his flanks.

  Outside, voices were raised with agitation, and above them, Thumil could be heard saying, “It’s all right, Captain. He’s all right. No, that won’t be necessary. Did you hear me? I said no.”

  A burly dwarf with a salt-and-pepper beard and a horned helm pushed his way inside, a double-bladed battle axe over one shoulder. The Nameless Dwarf knew him: Captain Stolhok, a decent enough dwarf by any standard. He would have made a much better choice for Thumil’s replacement as marshal than that pervert Mordin. More memories, knitting together, weaving the texture of his life. But there were patches, whole patches of nothingness. Why could he recall some things and not others?

  “Captain Stolhok!” Thumil yelled, but his voice was cut off by the slamming of the cell door.

  Stolhok looked different: There was a grim set to his jaw, and in his eyes there was little room for anything other than loathing.

  The Nameless Dwarf turned his back on him. How could he understand Stolhok’s reaction to him, if he wasn’t in possession of all the facts?

  “What’f up, fogger,” Stolhok said, “fcared to fafe someone who ain’t fcared of you?”

  That lisp. He almost laughed as he remembered the way they used to rib Stolhok in the taverns. Even now, he couldn’t resist it.

  “You might consider substituting ‘frightened’ for ‘scared’, laddie,” the Nameless Dwarf said. “And ‘fight’ for ‘face’.”

  “What?” Stolhok said. Then he got it. “Why, you fogging piefe of fit!”

  The swoosh of air. The scuff of boots on stone.

  The Nameless Dwarf spun on his heel, crashed an elbow into Stolhok’s nose, and followed it up with a punch. The shogger had swung for him with the axe. Shader had moved to intercept him.

  Stolhok’s knees buckled, and he went down. Blood spurted from his ruined nose. The Nameless Dwarf’s hand snaked out to snatch the axe before it hit the ground. He held it for a moment, turning it over and over. A fair weapon, nicely balanced. But it was no substitute for the axe he’d once possessed.

  He recognized the pull of desire. It was the same as when he craved a flagon of mead at the end of the day. Or the beginning. Sometimes even the middle. But in this case, it wasn’t a healthy need: it was compulsive, and it sent shivers beneath his skin. Maybe it would always be there, that insubstantial craving for the axe of his vision, lurking at the back of his mind, like the black dog mood ever threatening to bring him down.

  The semicircle of spears shook, and worried looks passed between the Red Cloaks.

  “Now look here,” one of them said. “We don’t want no trouble now, do we, lads?”

  “That’s right,” another said. “Just put the axe down and move to the bench. No one needs to get hurt.”

  The Nameless Dwarf slapped the haft into his palm.

  The dwarves skittered back against the walls.

  “Don’t know about you, laddie,” the Nameless Dwarf said to Shader, “but I’m parched as a parrot and stiff as a morning glory. Quick flagon down at the Queen’s Beard, then I’ll take you over to the scarolite mines. How’s that sound?”

  He strode toward the door, wondering how far from the ninth level tavern they were, but before he could lay a hand on it, a guard darted in and took a jab at him.

  The Nameless Dwarf swept the axe down, and the spear-tip clattered to the floor. The dumbfounded Red Cloak was left staring at the splintered shaft in his hands.

  The others started to shuffle forward, thought better of it, and stayed where they were.

  “Shog,” the Nameless Dwarf said, pounding the side of the scarolite helm with his fist. “How am I going to drink in this bucket?” He turned on the Red Cloaks. “Any of you lads know a good blacksmith?”

  They all exchanged looks.

  “Won’t help, my friend,” Shader said. “It’s fused to your skin.”

  The Nameless Dwarf ran his fingers along the seam connecting the helm to the base of his neck. Course it was. “Bloody shogging shogger,” he said, shoving the door open and stepping out into the corridor. “Where’s that bastard philosopher? Oops!”

  A dozen spears came at him at once. He twisted past two, batted a third aside with Stolhok’s axe, and hacked down. Someone screamed, and a hand flopped to the floor, fingers still wriggling.

  The Nameless Dwarf almost stopped then. It’s not what he’d intended, but in the heat of battle… No, that was no excuse. It had never happened before. He’d always shown restraint. Or had he? He was beginning to wonder.”

  A spear glanced off his chainmail. Another grazed his shoulder. He roared and swung the axe like a club. The spearmen scurried back, but he was relentless, stepping in close and bashing away with the flat of his blades.

  It came back to him as he dodged and ducked and blocked and swung: how good he was. How good he’d always been, training at the Ephebe, and in the uniform of a Ravine Guard, the same as these dwarves wore.

  Someone started blowing short, desperate blasts on a trumpet.

  Movement from behind caused him to pivot, just enough to get a glimpse through the eye-slit.

  The Red Cloaks in the cell were creeping closer with leveled spears. Shader stepped in front of them, manacled hands raised.

  “Out of the way,” one of them snarled, “or we’ll gut you like a pig.”

  Seeing their opportunity, the Red Cloaks in the corridor surged forward, and the Nameless Dwarf had his work cut out staying alive.

  Four guards were down, but he was bleeding from a score of cuts. Through his attackers, he caught sight of Thumil’s white robe.

  He clobbered another. The flat of the axe clanged against a helm, and the Red Cloak crumpled. A bristling wall of spears came at him. It was too close to what had happened before, he realized, when he’d faced wave after wave of red-winged demons, and he’d plowed through them like a reaper with a scythe.

  “Don’t hurt him,” Thumil cried. “He’s using the flat.”

  “Not on my shogging wrist, he didn’t!”

  Shader backed into the doorway, dragging a Red Cloak with him. He had the chain connecting his stone manacles around the dwarf’s neck, and was using him as a shield. The knight could certainly handle himself in a fight. Even without a weapon, and with his hands in shackles.

  Shader shoved the Red Cloak back into the cell and slammed the door shut. He got one of the three bolts in place before he had to spin out of the way of a spear.

  Heavy footfalls pounded down the corridor to the left, and that seemed to give the Red Cloaks renewed courage.

  “C’mon, lads, we can take him,” one yelled, and lunged with his spear. It struck the Nameless Dwarf in the guts, snapping a link on his hauberk.

  “Laddie, I’m trying to give you a chance,” the Nameless Dwarf said. He took hold of the spear shaft and yanked. As the Red Cloak flew forward, the scarolite helm came down to butt him in the face.

  “Stop!” Thumil cried, waving his arms from behind the dozen standing spearmen. “Please stop!”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Another white-robed councilor, came into view at the head of a column of Red Cloaks with shields and swords. “Kill him, and anyone who gets in the way.”

  “Grago,” Thumil said. “You don’t have the authority.”

  At a nod from Grago, a couple of Black-Cloaked Krypteia emerged from the pack and escorted Thumil to one side.

  The Nameless Dwarf backed up against the d
oor beside Shader. “Crouch down, and put your hands on the ground.”

  He raised the axe, and Shader did as he was told. The blades came down, sending up stone chips and dust, and shearing straight through the chains.

  Shader reached for a spear, changed his mind, and took a dagger from the belt of an unconscious Red Cloak.

  “Ready?” The Nameless Dwarf stepped away from the door.

  The spearmen pulled back, waiting for the newcomers bustling down the corridor.

  Banded armor creaked, swords glinted in the dim light coming off the dusted-over glowstones set into the ceiling. The newly arrived Red Cloaks were packed four abreast, with shields locked, and shog only knew how many ranks deep.

  “Ready,” Shader said, turning the dagger over and over in his hand.

  The phalanx advanced.

  “One…” The Nameless Dwarf rolled his shoulders.

  The Red Cloaks picked up pace, hammering swords against shields.

  “Two…”

  A shout went up, and the phalanx moved to a jog.

  “Thr—”

  Thunder boomed, flames flashed, and smoke billowed, flooding the corridor.

  A dark-haired woman stepped out of the churning brume. She was robed in begrimed white, the same red symbol on her chest as on Shader’s surcoat.

  “Rhiannon!” Shader said.

  A tiny man appeared behind her, delivering concussive blasts with some sort of wand. He had to be a homunculus, one of the gnomish denizens of Gehenna. He was no taller than a dwarf child, and like a ghost, he was part in, part out of reality. All the Nameless Dwarf could see were his pallid hands and face, his pink eyes. But then it grew obvious, as glimpses of the corridor behind could be seen through his clothing: He was wearing a concealer cloak.

  The woman—Rhiannon—grabbed Shader’s arm.

  “Come on,” she said, “let’s go.”

  Whatever it was that shot from the homunculus’s wand pinged off of shields and sent up shards of stone from the floor. A few blasts got through, and blood started to spray.

  Red Cloaks yelled, cried, and screamed. And then they were routed.

  “Friends,” Shader explained to the Nameless Dwarf. “Quickly, come with us.”

  They ran back the way Rhiannon and the homunculus had come. It took them deeper into the ravine. The only way out down there was the portal beneath the Sanguis Terrae, the lake at the foot of the ravine, and that was one place the Nameless Dwarf didn’t want to see again. He didn’t know why, exactly, but thought of it filled him with dread. If their plan was to flee the city, then the only way he was going was up.

  “Back the other way,” the Nameless Dwarf said. “There were only fifty Red Cloaks, give or take. I tell you, I could’ve—”

  “Someone shut scuttle-head up,” the homunculus said.

  He didn’t sound like any homunculus the Nameless Dwarf had so far met. His accent was strange: brash and nasally; and every last word sounded like a question, even when it wasn’t.

  “I’m trying to concentrate.” The homunculus ran his hands over the wall, muttering and cursing. “It was here. I shogging know it was here.”

  “After them!” Grago’s voice rolled down the corridor, and the tramping of boots on stone sounded every bit like an approaching avalanche.

  “Sure that’s only fifty?” the woman asked, casting a worried look over her shoulder.

  “Give or take, I said, lassie.”

  The Nameless Dwarf saw what the homunculus was looking for. He only knew because he was a miner’s son, and his pa had told his boys wondrous tales about the magic of the mines. The dwarves had inherited a handful of ghost walls, if not the lore to create them, from the homunculi back in the distant past. You’d have thought this pale-faced shogger would have seen it a mile off.

  He shoved past the homunculus and stepped right through the wall, as if it weren’t there. He found himself in an entirely different corridor that wound its way up.

  It was all so unfamiliar, a part of the ravine he’d not had access to before. But it was starting to become clear. The sense that told a dwarf where he was underground, where the air came from, and where the nearest point of egress was, told him something more: they were inside the walls of the ravine, and not as far down as he’d assumed. They can’t have been much lower than the Dodecagon; perhaps only a level or two.

  He popped his head back through the ghost wall.

  “I take it you were looking for this, laddie. You have to have the knack, see.”

  “How the shog—?” the homunculus started.

  “Old miner’s trick. My pa was… Ah, never mind. Coming?”

  They followed him through.

  Rhiannon led them along a maze of twists and turns and up a steepening incline. When they finally arrived at a door, the homunculus produced a sliver of stone and broke it into two halves. It was one of the keys the Krypteia used to access their secret places. More homunculus lore that was denied to the regular citizens of Arx Gravis.

  The door began to grind its way upward, letting in a blast of fresh air from the walkway.

  The Nameless Dwarf sobered in an instant. “Where did you get that key?”

  “What’s it to you?” The homunculus ducked into the widening gap and stepped over a black bundle as the others followed him outside.

  They were on the top tier, with nothing overhead save for clear cobalt sky. The twin suns were at their zenith, blazing down ire at the bundle on the walkway.

  It was a cloak, small enough for a dwarf child, or a homunculus. And it was covering something.

  “Is that…?” The Nameless Dwarf reached down and pulled away an edge of the fabric.

  Dead eyes stared up at him from a bearded face.

  “Nice,” Rhiannon said. “That your handiwork, midget?”

  The homunculus scowled.

  “Well, laddie?”

  The concealer cloak whipped up behind the homunculus in the gusting wind, taking on the cobalt of the sky, the ocher of the ravine wall. He had to have taken it from the dead dwarf and left his own cloak to cover the body. Sunlight glinted from the blades nestled in his baldrics, and a pallid hand crept toward one.

  “So what if it is? It’s what I do. You got a problem with that?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes.” The Nameless Dwarf set his axe-head on the walkway and folded his hands atop the haft. “Can’t blame you for not knowing, laddie, but this city’s seen too much blood. Way too much.”

  “Look, mate,” the homunculus said, “no one asked you to come along. If you don’t like it—”

  “I asked him,” Shader said. “He can help us get into the mines. There are tunnels all the way to the roots of Gandaw’s mountain.”

  The Nameless Dwarf swung his axe up onto his shoulder. “That I can, laddie, but only on condition that your little friend here doesn’t kill any more of my people.”

  “Who the shog are you to tell me what to do?” the homunculus said. “And besides, my foster mother told me never to trust a bloke with a piss-pot on his head.”

  “I’m with the midget there,” Rhiannon said. “It’s not like we know anything about him. Last thing we need’s another—”

  Shader cast a quick look back at the entranceway. “You planning on closing that?”

  “Oh shit,” the homunculus said. He fumbled his two pieces of stone back together, and the door started to come down.

  “Look,” Shader said, leading them out onto the walkway, “this is… Well, he doesn’t have a name anymore.”

  Nothing like rubbing salt in the wound.

  “They call him the Nameless Dwarf now,” Shader explained.

  “There a reason for that?” Rhiannon said. “I mean, it doesn’t sound good.”

  “Aye, there’s a reason, lassie,” the Nameless Dwarf said. “I’m just not sure what it is.”

  “Sounds like the sort of stupid monikers the journeymen are always coming
up with,” the homunculus said. “Twats.”

  “It’s no worse than Shadrak the Unseen,” Rhiannon said.

  Now there was a shifty name for a shifty shogger. Presumably, being unseen was an asset in the homunculus’s line of work. Judging from what the Nameless Dwarf had already observed, Shadrak’s wasn’t likely an honest trade.

  “Yeah, well that weren’t me,” Shadrak said. “It’s a reputation, ain’t it?”

  “I could think of something better,” Rhiannon mumbled.

  “Won’t catch me calling you Nameless Dwarf,” Shadrak said. “No offense, mate. It’s just a bit wanky, if you ask me. Reckon I’ll just call you Nameless, if it’s all the same to you.”

  The Nameless Dwarf thought it over. It was an improvement, but not by much. He shrugged and nodded. Beggars, after all, couldn’t be choosers.

  As they reached the hub of four intersecting walkways, the grind of stone on stone caused them to look behind. The door they’d come out of was once again rising, and booted feet could be seen in the widening gap at the bottom.

  “We need to move,” Shader said. “Which way, uh, Nameless?”

  Nameless pointed toward the archway on a plaza near the center of the tier. What he saw standing beneath it—or rather who—told him everything that had happened so far was anything but blind chance.

  “Past the bald bastard, and keep going till we reach the switchback path cut into the ravine wall. Same way you must have come in.”

  “Bald bastard?” Shader said.

  All eyes turned to look where Nameless was pointing. Judging by their expressions, they recognized the philosopher standing there just as much as he did.

  Aristodeus.

  FAREWELL TO ARX GRAVIS

  The philosopher stood on the far side of the arch, toga flapping in the wind, a leather satchel on one shoulder. He was turning an ebon sword over and over in his hands.

  A shudder ripped through Nameless. He wanted nothing more than to hurl the evil-looking blade from the walkway. The violence of his reaction shocked him.

  Shadrak pulled his concealer cloak tight, until only his hands and eyes were visible. The rest of him was like the blurring of the sky, an undulation of the walkway.