Hath showed his iron circle token and the sentry looked under the hide of the first wagon, glancing over the weaponry and bundles of tribute tied there. Satisfied, he waved them on.
The caravan moved on, and Golgoth watched as the tented city emerged from between the foothills. A patchwork of muted colours nestled between rolling foothills, and from this distance the tribes people thronging its streets were teeming dark specks. The city was the largest settlement in the mountains, certainly the largest there had ever been since the fall of Arrowhead Peak—to Golgoth, who had grown up in a settlement that was little more than a village, it seemed almost impossibly huge. A man could become lost wandering in the avenues between the tents, and there must be a thousand hidden corners for scheming. Even from this distance Golgoth could just catch the smell of the city—smoke, sweat and cooking.
Huge and mobile, the city migrated with the seasons from the foothills to the edges of the plains within sight of Lady Charybdia’s walls, its population carrying their homes of hide and cloth on their backs and loaded onto pack-reptiles, herding their flocks of sheep and goats before them. Every tent was dyed a different colour and bore a different clan or guild symbol on its side. Columns of smoke rose from cooking fires and hearths where the weapons of Grik’s soldiers were forged from black mountain iron. Soldiers were staging mock duels in clearings between the tents, and Golgoth knew that other, far more real combats would be in progress in the dark corners of the city.
Golgoth estimated there must be over twenty thousand souls there, as many tribes people as had gathered in any one place since the fall of Arrowhead Peak. Fighting, drinking, rutting, smelting the iron and hunting the food that would be needed to survive the next migration. At the centre of it all, so travellers told, was a vast tent made from hundreds of stitched hides, emblazoned with a huge quartered circle and guarded by burly fur-clad soldiers. There Grik would be waiting on a throne of carved bone, thick bearskins under his feet and a dozen wives watching from the shadows. Grik was the judge and the patron of the city’s populace, choosing warriors and settling disputes, ordering deaths when his anger was high and pardoning the weak and treacherous when he made himself lenient with ale.
If they knew what a weak man Grik really was, and the calibre of leader they could have if they wished it, the Emerald Sword could be great again. But they did not know, they were blind, and Golgoth would have to make them see.
“Time to take your leave, Kron,” said Golgoth quietly as the caravan trundled past the first few tents of the city.
“Of course. This will soon be no place for an old man.”
They both knew the truth. This was Golgoth’s fight. Kron had taught the warrior as much as he could, but Grik’s blood was Golgoth’s to shed.
The two men dropped from the wagon to the ground. Kron swept his robes around him and was gone, melting into the unwashed gaggle of tribes people. Golgoth tried to catch sight of him but the old man simply disappeared. More sorcery, perhaps. Or just a life unseen.
The caravan moved into the earthen streets of the city, passing hovels that clustered alongside fine tents of cured hide with banners fluttering from them, pens of animals and gaggles of children. Crippled beggars gave the caravan a wide berth, doubtless knowing that Grik’s guards were not generous men. Tribes people watched the caravan from the doorways of their tents, perhaps wondering if this year’s tribute would be enough to make Grik a more merciful man for a while. The smells were stronger now, unwashed bodies and a hundred hearths cooking, and the sounds rose to match them—murmurs of conversation punctuated with shouts or distant peals of laughter.
It was a world away from the solitude of the mountains, but Golgoth fancied it was no less dangerous. He could all but feel Grik’s eye upon the city, a constant vigilance to weed out enemies and enforce loyalty.
The people’s eyes were darkened with the weariness of fear. Watchtowers cast shadows like iron bars across the city. Every street the caravan passed had parties of swordsmen patrolling. Golgoth knew little of cities, but he felt instinctively that this was one held tight by the chains of its ruler’s will.
Golgoth jogged towards the head of the caravan. Hath handed him his axe, the iron still rust-coloured with dried blood, as he passed. He could feel his warriors tensing—any moment now one of Grik’s men would fail to see a familiar face in the caravan guard, someone would demand to know why they had not brought their sorcerer back. An arrow or a sling bullet or a thrown blade would hit home and they would be surrounded.
Sentries on towers dotted throughout the city glared down. The reptile-beasts growled and a party of hunters, their faces blooded from the kill, stared at Golgoth as the caravan passed.
The road they were following led deeper and deeper into the city, until finally they could see the enormous chieftain’s tent, wreathed in a pall of smoke from the guards’ fires around it. Golgoth’s men were close enough now to make a break for it and hope to reach Grik’s compound before they were cut down. Golgoth could see the thick greasy smoke coiling from between the hides of the chieftain’s tent and the breath of the fifty-strong guard white in the cold.
Focus had been Kron’s last and most important lesson. Control. Colder blood and a stiller heart. Golgoth had never valued such things before but here, stalking through a city that was itself an enemy, he realised it could be all he had. The claws and teeth of the bear were there again, the swiftness of the mountain carrion raptor and the pin-sharp senses of the snake lying in wait. But there was also the steadfastness of the rock itself, the chill of the autumn rains, the cold and solidity of the world around him. Golgoth would need to bring all these things together as he had never tried before. He could already tap into the power that Kron had spoken of, but could he control it?
Yes, he could. Because Golgoth would survive, and Golgoth would win, and even in death he would forge the Emerald Sword again. He could not return across the mountains now, not after he had come this far. Fighting Grik and freeing the city was the only plan he had left. There was nothing else. He would defeat Grik or he would die, and he would not die because Kron had taught him how to win.
A trio of young soldiers, carrying shields and spears, blocked the road ahead.
“Fealty and purpose?” barked the leader, who had one eye missing and a snarling face aged beyond his years.
“Fealty to Grik of the Emerald Sword,” replied Golgoth. He held out the iron token. “Here to deliver the three-year tithe to our chief.”
The leader beckoned and a dozen more warriors jogged over from the campfires, spears and axes ready. There were some Touched with them, one with an extra set of arms, another with long and powerful legs with knees that bent the wrong way like the legs of a warhorse. Amongst them was a man who was not a warrior, and whose skin was pale shimmering silver, naked to the waist. There were pages of cured and cut skin, covered in arcane scribblings, nailed to his shoulders and ribs. A sorcerer, and one of higher authority than the one Golgoth had killed, judging by the burly four-man guard that surrounded him.
“Give the watchword,” said the leader. Golgoth could see the tendons in his forearms tightening as he got ready to hurl his spear, should the wrong word be spoken.
But there was no word. Golgoth had known that Grik might have some such ruse to identify stealthy attackers. His plan in such a case was simple.
Suddenly, the leader’s head snapped back and there was a thin black-fletched arrow jutting from his good eye. Golgoth glanced backwards and saw Tarn, the assassin, nocking another arrow to the bow he had taken during the fight at the Snake’s Throat. Before he could fire again arrows began lancing in reply from the two closest watchmen and Grik’s warrior guard were charging, some to the side of the convoy to surround it, others straight towards Golgoth.
“Cast the net!” someone yelled, and the sorcerer made a complex gesture that hurt to look at. Spikes of light speared up from the ground, describing a cage of light around the convoy, a cage that trapped Golgoth�
�s men with their attackers.
Golgoth swept his shield off his back and drew his axe. The bear’s claws were hot in his fingers. His eyes burned as he threw his senses out and the cage was full of movement, battle-cries and screams, the sigh of metal through the air and the rending as it passed through flesh.
And deep inside his chest he imagined a sliver of ice where his heart should be, pure and uncaring that would bind all his power to his will. It stabbed down through his soul, pinning it to the only desire that mattered—the death of Grik and the end of the long night of the Emerald Sword.
The first attackers reached him and their shields clashed with Golgoth’s own, the shock driving Golgoth back a step. It was one of the Touched, using his powerful altered legs to barge at full thrust into him. Golgoth was supposed to buckle and crumple to the ground, where the Touched’s fellow warriors could finish him off.
Golgoth took the impact and let himself slip to the side, spinning and bringing the head of his axe slamming into the Touched’s shoulder as he fell past him. The Touched pitched into the ground face-first and Golgoth slammed the edge of his shield down onto the back of his neck.
Something crunched but Golgoth didn’t pause to see the Touched spasm and die—already his axe was up, turning aside a spear thrust and twisting in the air, catching the spear shaft and pulling the attacker towards him. Golgoth could smell the meat on the guard’s breath as he drove his knee up into the man’s groin, punched his shield into his face and let the unconscious body fall.
Golgoth had a split-second to take stock. Lonn, the Touched youth with the all-seeing eyes, was lying broken and bloody by the wheel of the middle wagon. Another of Golgoth’s warriors lay beside him, keening with pain as he tried to pull an arrow from his gut. One of the reptilian beasts had been struck and was rearing up, scattering both side’s men as it trumpeted in rage. The fight was raging everywhere, Hath and Valin were back-to-back and surrounded on top of the lead wagon, Tarn using a thin golden sword as he duelled with three men at once.
All around was the cage of light, blue-white and burning, ensuring that no matter who won, Golgoth’s men would not escape. The sorcerer, hands held high and light bleeding from his eyes, was on the other side of the cage behind the shields of his three remaining guards. There was a score of enemies between Golgoth and the sorcerer, knots of men surrounding and killing Golgoth’s men.
Golgoth didn’t care about his men. The cold of control told him that he had never really cared, because they were ultimately irrelevant to his goal. If they were of use to him here as they died, then so be it. And if any of them happened to survive, then they would be honoured by the new Emerald Sword for their strength. But for now, there was nothing in the world that mattered but the sorcerer and the malevolence of Grik, hiding beyond the bars of the sorcerer’s cage.
Every step was a battle. The many-limbed Touched parried a dozen of Golgoth’s strikes, and Golgoth called on the bear to help him swat the deformed warrior aside with his shield and slam him against the side of the wagon, cracking his skull open. One of the guards cut at Golgoth’s legs but he stepped out of the way with the raptor’s quickness, pivoting on his forward foot and tearing his axe-head through the man’s neck without breaking step.
The fire was gone. Instead, the cold was in command, reading every movement and dictating a pattern of strike and counter-strike. The stabbing spear was ducked, the shield cloven open, the warrior behind the shield kicked on the face and hewn through the stomach as he fell to the ground. Golgoth saw the arrow in mid-flight and caught it on his shield, using the motion to bring the edge of the shield into the face of the nearest enemy and shatter his jaw.
The sorcerer must have seen Golgoth carving his way through Grik’s warriors, for he was suddenly burning with blue fire and drawing his arm back, as if to throw a spear.
The sorcerer cast a bolt of blue lightning straight at his attacker. Golgoth’s reactions were superhumanly fast but the lance of energy still raked down his side, shattering his shield like glass, tearing from his ribcage down to his knee. He hit the ground, blue flame rippling across his fur cloak and seething through his skin. He tore off his cloak and rolled on the earth, trying to smother the flames against the blood-soaked soil. The magical bolt had hewn through five or six men before it hit him, boring through torsos and separating limbs from bodies, and the remains were strewn across the ground. Golgoth’s warriors were few now, surrounded by Grik’s soldiers, many reeling from the sudden discharge of energy, all covered in dozens of minor wounds.
The flames were gone but the pain was not—Golgoth was still burning, his skin and fat sizzling, threatening to char down to the muscle and leave him helpless. But he had suffered pain before, and he had known how to master it even before Kron had taught him to armour his soul with ice. Pain could be ignored. The threat of failure could not.
Golgoth commanded his body to obey and lurched to his feet. He cast aside the smoking remains of his shield and pulled a short sword from a severed hand on the ground. The sorcerer’s guards were the next obstacle, and Golgoth refused to give up now when he was so close. He caught the spear of the first man with his axe, stabbed him in the stomach with the sword, withdrew it and hurled it through the neck of the second. The third was a big man, with a face grizzled by a lifetime hunting in the mountains and countless kill-braids knotted into his hair. Golgoth saw the sorcerer about to unleash another spell and grabbed the arm of the big man, hauling him between himself and the sorcerer just as a hail of molten silver needles scattered from the sorcerer’s hands. They speared through the warrior’s body and many punched through into the muscles of Golgoth’s shoulder, studding the head and haft of his axe, stabbing through the back of his hand. Hot lances of pain joined the raging agony of the burns that he was barely able to suppress.
Golgoth threw the dead warrior into the last guard, and turned his attention to the silver-skinned sorcerer. The man was rangy and wide-eyed, no warrior. He pulled a short sword from his belt but Golgoth shattered its blade, his return stroke slicing through the sorcerer’s neck.
The head flopped back on a scrap of skin, pale blood like milk spattering from the wound. The sorcerer’s skin shrivelled as the magical power flooded out of his body, beams of blue light shining through the tears in the skin as it burned away. The body dissolved as Golgoth watched, until there were only charred, fragile bones that crumbled to the ground.
The bars of light flashed and dimmed, and suddenly the cage was gone entirely.
Golgoth saw others rushing to aid Grik’s guards, but there were few and they were not prepared for someone like him. He sprinted for Grik’s tent, swiping his axe at anyone who got in the way. Women screamed and men yelled curses as Golgoth’s surviving warriors rushed to join him, running through tents and hacking their way through the gathering crowd.
Golgoth ignored them. The chieftain’s tent loomed large, its arcane symbols burning with the strength of the violence erupting so close by. Golgoth leapt over one of the campfires that ringed the tent, kicking a pot of boiling stew into the face of a warrior pursuing him, and suddenly he was there.
He tore open the side of the tent, the hide coming apart in his hands. It was dark inside and stank of sweat and meat, unwashed bodies and smoke. There was commotion within and Golgoth could make out bodies scurrying away from him: Grik’s concubines and catamites fleeing from this apparition of violence.
Golgoth stepped inside, the cloying smoke filling his nostrils. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw the roof was held high by tall poles and trophies of bones and severed heads dangled from the poles on lengths of sinew. The rotting remains of old meals lay scattered around the filthy furs that covered the ground, half-devoured carcasses of spit-roasted animals and empty earthenware ale flagons.
The chieftain’s throne stood in the centre of the tent. It was made of pitted, stained bone—legends had it that the bones were those of a sky-whale brought down in distant times by the tribe’s fore
fathers. On that throne was a massive, shaggy-haired figure, deep red eyes glowering in the gloom.
“Chieftain Grik the weak-blooded,” said Golgoth slowly. “I am Golgoth, come to claim the headship of the Emerald Sword. For too long the Sword has been blunted. I shall make it sharp again. Yield, and your name will remain though you will not. Resist, and I will make sure not even the memory of you survives.”
The figure smiled, bright white teeth picking out an impossibly wide mouth, gleaming in the dark. “You have lived too long away from my city, whipling cur. You cannot begin to understand.” The voice was thick, dark and treacly.
Grik stood. He was a clear two heads taller than Golgoth. “What you call weakness is strength. I could have conquered the tribes a dozen times over, wasting the lives of my tribesmen on some petty feud. The Canis Mountains could have been mine, and I would have paid for a worthless mountain kingdom in the blood of my people. The Sword are not mindless barbarians who make war to give their lives meaning. I have seen the way. When my patrons have seen my worth, I will be a god and the Sword will be my church. You cannot imagine my plans. You cannot imagine what I know.”
Grik was Touched. It was no real surprise—those mutated by the winds of magic were often as deformed in mind as they were in body, and Grik was clearly insane. But Golgoth had expected an old, corpulent or weak man, perhaps well-trained but no match for real strength. A Touched was a random factor—there were any number of powers or deformities that Grik might possess. And this was the chieftain’s home ground.
Grik walked closer. He shrugged the thick furs off his shoulders and Golgoth saw the chieftain was a hulking muscular creature. His face was flat-featured as if pushed in; his hair, black and lank, stuck to his face with grease and sweat. There was something wrong with his mouth—it turned down at the comers and carried on down either side of his throat under the layers of hide and leather he wore. Those glowing eyes were pits in Grik’s face, no pupil or iris, no lids.
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