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

by D. P. Prior

  Stark blue lights winked into life along the ceiling of a corridor extending into the distance. Heavy footfalls pounded the metal floor, coming for them. Coming.

  A shadow fell over him. He glimpsed something sinuous and writhing. His carrier held him out, and he looked right into the slitted eyes of a gigantic black snake.

  Then he realized it wasn’t a snake, just the head and neck of one atop a man’s body.

  It reached for him with enormous hands, cradled him to its cold, hard chest.

  With a whoosh of air, the metal door closed, and the snake-man bore him away along the corridor.

  Bird’s face came into focus, half warm smile, half empty blackness.

  Shadrak tried to turn away but couldn’t move.

  Bird reached out with a finger and tapped his forehead.

  Shadrak coughed, then sat up on the bed. Spasms ran through his muscles. He clung to Bird’s cloak, anchored himself in the familiarity of its feathers.

  “It was you,” he croaked, meeting Bird’s eyes, which had resumed their old solidity. They were dark pebbles, moist and glistening. “You were carrying me. Why?”

  Bird took Shadrak’s hand in his own, gently stroked it. “You were different, Shadrak. People are afraid of difference, even homunculi. Pink of eye, pale of skin. They saw only weakness, sickness, and despite all their lore, their science, they viewed you as a curse.”

  “A freak, you mean.” He’d gotten the same in Sarum. They’d called him corpse-boy, unclean, demon-child.

  “The homunculi are a hard race,” Bird said. “They have no place for illness and deformity. The newly begotten are checked for defects. Those deemed no good are fed to the seethers and the other banes that dwell in the deepest chasms of Gehenna. I was tasked with disposing of you.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  Bird sat beside him on the bed. “Qlippoth changed me. There, amid the nightmares of the Cynocephalus, I glimpsed what that poor creature is afraid of. Together, the denizens of Qlippoth are like a fractured mirror, revealing the face of the Demiurgos. Seeing this for myself, I was repelled. Repelled, and ashamed of what we are, what I was.

  “Upon my return to Gehenna, I no longer fit in. I tried, because I had nowhere else to go, but when I saw you, when I was told to… I felt only kinship and the need to get away.

  “I knew there were dissenters among the homunculi. Knew and never approved, until that moment. I took you to them, to Mephesch, Abednago, and the others, and they arranged for your escape.”

  “And this snake-man,” Shadrak said. “He gave me to Kadee?”

  Bird pressed his hands together over his lips. “The Dreamers see Mamba as a god. Others would call him a freak, a hybrid of Sektis Gandaw’s making. But he has more in common with the beings of Qlippoth than any others, though his people are older—the firstborn of the Cynocephalus, you might say. The dog-head shed them like the Demiurgos shed the homunculi, and while there is antipathy between our races, the Sedition and the hybrids have a common aim: we would both see the Cynocephalus freed from fear, and his mother, Eingana, avenged for the rape visited upon her.”

  Shadrak’s mind was a blur of competing questions, thoughts, realizations.

  “So,” he said to Bird, “now you’ve gone and enlightened me, what am I supposed to do with it? Take orders from you? From Mephesch? Because I bet the Archon’s gonna love that. He’s got Kadee. She’s shogging dead, but he’s holding her hostage till I take Nameless down for him.”

  “And even so, you must resist. Stall him a little longer. If we succeed in the three quests, and Aristodeus is proved right, the Archon may come to see things differently.”

  “And if Albert gets to Nameless first?”

  Bird raised a finger. His eyes rolled to one side, and he cocked his head, listening. “We have arrived.”

  Sure enough, the background hum of the plane ship had stopped.

  They were in Verusia, the realm of the Lich Lord.

  With the singleminded focus that had kept him alive all these years, Shadrak shut down all inner chatter about Nameless, the Archon, and all the other crap Bird had dumped on him.

  Out of old habit, his fingers danced over the blades and razor stars in his baldric, patted the handles of his pistols.

  Then he headed for the control room, trusting that Bird would follow.

  VERUSIA

  Snow-dusted pines shone silver in the light of the waning moon—just the one moon, not the three of Aethir. It looked odd and alien to Shadrak after so long away.

  He shifted the rifle on his back for the thousandth time, touched both his pistols, and the thundershot wedged in his belt. He did the same with his blades, every contact assuaging some irrational fear that bad shit would happen if he didn’t check they were all there.

  The forest dropped down toward a dark artery that oozed along the valley floor. To the west, clusters of ghostly lights cut through the mist like a warning. Beyond them, a jagged tower jutted above night-blackened walls with battlements like teeth. Atop its turret, a flag shimmered argent in the moon’s glow.

  Shadrak rummaged about in the bottomless bag, pulled out his goggles, and put them on.

  The darkness brightened to a soft green tint, and he could now see squat houses as if he were up close to them. They were arrayed about a domed basilica in concentric circles, each with a hanging lantern marking the entrance.

  Raising his eyes to the castle, Shadrak watched hazy red figures passing between the merlons, ascending and descending the steps coiling around the tower.

  The flag came into focus next, its frayed and stained fabric bearing the emblem of a cross atop a triangle.

  He lowered his gaze to the rocky plinth at the base of the curtain walls. There were scores of spikes thrust into the ground, sacks or rags hanging from them like an army of scarecrows.

  “Place puts a creep in my crotch, laddie,” Nameless said, breath misting through the eye-slit of the great helm. “What can you see?”

  Shadrak lifted the goggles and left them pressing against his hair. “Wolfmalen.” He pointed at the town, which had reverted to pinpricks of brightness against the black of night.

  “In the heart of Verusia’s Schwarzwald,” Ludo said, squinting into the distance, arms hugging his chest. His lips had the faintest tinge of blue, and the moonlight etched his face with deep crevasses and pools of shadow.

  Galen stood at his shoulder, refusing to be cold, whiskers and eyebrows bristling with ice.

  Albert sucked in his cheeks and shivered. “Couldn’t we go back to the plane ship, see if we can find some coats? Either that, or a cup of cocoa.”

  “Should have thought of that last time you went snooping through my stuff,” Shadrak said.

  “Your stuff?”

  “My plane ship, ain’t it?” Or maybe the poisoner had gotten ahead of himself and considered it his already.

  Albert huffed and sighed but said no more.

  Shadrak did his best to ignore him. He could guess the sort of look he was getting, but it made no difference. The poisoner had no idea he knew, unless of course Bird was a double-crossing son of a scut.

  He glanced at the homunculus, who was on his knees scratching about in the snow.

  Ekyls was crouched beside him, still naked from the waist up. Ice formed in crystals on his chest, fringed his forehead.

  “What is it?” Shadrak said.

  Bird sniffed at the air, tilted his head this way and that. “I hear nothing,” he whispered.

  The sweet scent of the pines washed over Shadrak as he strained to listen. Something rank mingled with it, made him put a hand over his nose.

  “Sorry, laddie,” Nameless said. “It’s the muck old Baldy tube-feeds me. Plays havoc with the intestines.”

  “Shush,” Bird said, holding up a finger for quiet. When he spoke, his voice was little more than a gasp. “Nothing. No life in the trees, in the air, below ground.”

  He was right. Save for the merest breeze swaying the t
ops of the pines, there was no movement, and the only sounds were those they made themselves.

  “Wait!” Bird said, pressing his ear to the snow. He made quick, clutching motions with his fingers. “Something to dig with.”

  Ekyls passed him his hatchet.

  Bird slammed it into the hard earth again and again, dislodging soil and stones until he’d made a small hole. Passing the hatchet back to Ekyls, he wormed his fingers into the ground, winced, and made a sharp clicking sound.

  “Got you!” He stood and withdrew his hand.

  At first, Shadrak thought he held a chunk of metal between thumb and forefinger. It was roughly ovoid and no bigger than a coin. As he peered closer, though, it moved. Legs like strands of silver wire uncurled; wings shook above an armored carapace; mandibles keen as scalpels clacked together.

  “Don’t touch,” Bird said, palming the creature and cupping his free hand over it. “It can pierce steel, grind rock into dust. We are standing above a nest.”

  Everyone stepped away, eyeing the ground nervously.

  “And you’re holding it?” Galen said.

  “May I?” Ludo said, balancing his spectacles on the end of his nose.

  “No,” Bird whispered. “We must not alarm it.” He lowered his hands to the hole, and the insect scuttled back inside. He piled earth and snow over it then stood, rubbing his palms together. “Stone-eaters: leftovers from Sektis Gandaw’s Global Technocracy.”

  “Nasty looking fellow,” Albert said. “Don’t suppose they’re venomous, are they?”

  The air shimmered, and Bird was gone.

  A white owl glided into the trees without so much as a sound.

  Shadrak patted his pouches again, touched each of the knives in his baldric, then started down into the valley. He’d given up worrying what Bird was up to. They had a job to do, and the sooner they got it done, the sooner they could leave.

  “Keep up,” he called over his shoulder. “Let’s not hang about this shithole any longer than we need to.”

  “Quite right,” Galen’s gruff voice came from behind. “Can’t ruddy argue with you there, wot.”

  ***

  The sun was coming up, a single bloodshot orb in a slate-gray sky, as they entered the town. A wide avenue, paved in the herringbone style, cut through box-houses of neatly mortared bricks. Slatted shutters were closed against the dawn light, but smoke plumed from chimneys, and Shadrak thought he could smell bacon.

  “There has to be somewhere half-decent to eat around here.” Albert patted his paunch. “Because I, for one, am famished.”

  “I’m sure you’ll live, laddie.” Nameless looked up at the castle overshadowing Wolfmalen. “What’s that?” He pointed his axe at the tall spikes Shadrak had seen earlier, standing like a palisade around the base.

  Shadrak pulled the goggles over his eyes. The spikes stood in sharp relief against the lime hue imparted by the lenses. The rising sun cast them in silhouette, but even so, he was starting to suspect they weren’t scarecrows. Least not the ordinary kind.

  He raised the goggles and offered Nameless a shrug by way of explanation.

  Somewhere beyond the houses, a rooster crowed as a beam of pale sunlight pierced the slurry of clouds.

  Almost immediately, shutters clattered open, radiating outward from the center of town in quick succession. Heads poked from windows, faces flushed with health and looking far too awake for so early in the day. Voices rose in greeting, doors swung wide, and men in feathered caps leaned against the jambs, lighting pipes and exchanging platitudes.

  “Now that’s more like it,” Galen said, striding over to a mustached man with woolen socks gartered below the knees. “Morning, sir. Could you tell us where we might break our fast?”

  The man’s eyes bulged, pipe stem halfway to his lips.

  “Hilda,” he yelled through the open door of his house. “Come quickly. We have guests. Wonderful, wonderful guests.” His voice was thickly accented, and the words sounded forced, unfamiliar. But it was the same common tongue spoken everywhere on Urddynoor.

  A plump woman appeared behind him, mousy hair wound in buns beneath a straw bonnet. Her face was broad and plain—an honest face, it seemed to Shadrak. Like Kadee’s, only white; free from care, free from worry.

  “Oh,” she cried, rushing toward Galen and embracing him like a long lost son. “Oh, oh, oh.”

  Galen blushed and looked to Ludo for help. When the adeptus turned his palms up and shrugged, Galen coughed and said, “Breakfast, madam.” He managed to disengage himself and straighten his jacket. “Is there somewhere in town?”

  “Oh, but you must come in.” She began to lead him by the hand. “Come in, all of you. There’s food a plenty for guests. We’d be honored to share our home. Honored.”

  “We ain’t got time for this,” Shadrak muttered under his breath.

  He glanced up at the forest of spikes beneath the castle. In and out, was how he’d thought it would be. Quick as you like. But once again, no one had bothered to plan, least of all that scut Aristodeus. He shook his head. They’d need time to scout the castle, find a way inside without being seen.

  Galen and Ludo were first through the doorway, and Albert was close behind. You’d have thought the poisoner would have learned from his own practice that the surest way to catch a man off guard was through his stomach.

  Was Shadrak the only one who sensed it? The only one who thought these people were just a bit too shogging happy, a bit too welcoming of strangers?

  Nameless waited in the doorway. “I like it even less than you, laddie,” he said. “The sooner we’re back on Aethir, the better. I’d rather take a stroll through Qlippoth than spend another minute in the shadow of that castle.”

  “I was expecting worse,” Shadrak said. “Ghosts, dead-shit that walks, maybe even witches. I should be relieved, but I ain’t.”

  “In my experience, that’s a good thing,” Nameless said. “Always keep your guard up, but don’t let anyone know you’re doing it. It’s a philosophy that’s got me a long way.”

  “Yeah, well mine’s got me a long way, too: cut a shogger’s throat before they cut yours.”

  ***

  With hot food in front of him, Shadrak felt his suspicions dwindle. Not all the way; just enough to let him wolf down his eggs and bacon without imagining himself choking on it. Not enough to unstrap the rifle from his back, even if it meant he had to stand rather than sit at the table. Of course, their hosts assumed it was on account of is short legs not being able to reach the floor from a chair.

  Scuts.

  On the other side of the table, Galen wiped yoke from his chops and stroked breadcrumbs from his mustache.

  Ludo sipped water beside him, plate untouched. He tried to deflect their hosts by feigning interest in their pathetic little lives, as if he gave a shit about local culture and the pastimes of market gardeners, or whatever the shog it was these people did.

  “May I?” Galen swapped plates with Ludo without waiting for an answer, and tucked in with gusto.

  Ekyls stabbed at his food and glared at anyone who might have noticed.

  Nameless had chosen to remain outside. He said it was to keep watch, but it was more likely because he couldn’t eat or drink in the great helm.

  Their hosts continued to fawn and smile, pouring tea and talking about the weather.

  Shadrak pushed his plate aside and nodded his thanks. Hilda handed him a cup and saucer. Her husband, George, hovered over him with a bowl of sugar lumps.

  Albert slurped the dregs of his tea and held his cup out for a refill. “A splendid repast.”

  Hilda and George exchanged glances, then, as if on cue, laughed politely.

  “Thank you for your kindness, sir,” Hilda said, pouring Albert more tea.

  “You are most welcome,” George said. “All of you.” He plopped a sugar lump in the cup, raised an eyebrow, and plopped in another one when Albert held up two fingers.

  “What I’d like to know,” Shadr
ak said, setting his cup and saucer down, “is what those spikes are around the castle.”

  Hilda coughed and spluttered, then started to wheeze.

  George took her by the shoulders and led her to a seat. “Sets her off,” he explained. “Not breakfast table talk, but you weren’t to know, not being from around here.”

  Hilda dabbed at her lips with a handkerchief. “Sorry. It’s my heart. Always been weak, hasn’t it, George?”

  “Always been weak.” George put his arm around her. “The gentleman didn’t mean anything by it, dear. It’s only natural to ask.”

  “Natural,” Hilda said.

  George ducked his head and put a hand to his cheek. There was a pause, as if he were deliberating what to say, and then he flicked a quick look at Shadrak. “There have been… bad folk in these parts. We are all a little on edge still.”

  “Bad folk,” Hilda said.

  “Raiders, they say. Troublemakers. Terrorizers. It’s all the same thing. Happens from time to time. All dealt with now, isn’t it Hilda? Safe as houses.”

  “Safe as houses, George. Thanks to the Prior.”

  George turned to the window, where the looming bulk of the castle dominated the view. He touched his forehead. “Praise be.”

  “This Prior of yours,”—Ludo leaned across the table, eyebrows dancing atop his spectacles—“do you see much of him?”

  Hilda pushed down on her thighs and rolled out of her seat to start collecting cups and plates. “See him? See the Prior? Well, I don’t know!”

  “Have you been up to the castle?” Galen said around a mouthful of bacon.

  Hilda dropped a saucer. It crashed to the tiles and split clean in half. Both halves wobbled noisily for a moment, all eyes upon them until they clattered to a stop.

  “No one goes up to the castle.” George was all grim seriousness. “Not decent folk, anyway. Not without an invitation, and they don’t come often.”

  “There’s a lottery,” Hilda said. “Once a year. Only others that go that way are sinners.”