A pillar, carved of the same black and glassy substance as the mountain itself, two paces wide and rising to the height of Gutcrusher’s chest, rose from the floor. Strange runes and symbols that made the hackles rise on his neck were carved into the walls in sinuous lines along the floor. There was a power here that even the ogres could feel humming in their bones, but it did not seem dangerous to them, only strange. Lying upon the center of the pillar was a head-sized globe of the clearest crystal, and in its strange depths lay an amber sculpture, like a fist-sized skull.
Gutcrusher felt a strange desire seize his heart, and, impulsive like all of his kind, he immediately gave in to the urge, lifting the crystal globe and shattering it on the floor!
Shards of glass exploded across the room, cutting his ankles and shins, but not seriously. Behind him, Balls cursed as he accidentally stepped on one of the fragments.
She was free. In her cell, just fifty paces from the central chamber, she felt the bands of power that had held her for so terribly, so excruciatingly long snap suddenly and cease to be. For a moment, or a lifetime or a thousand years she exulted, feeling the life come back into her shriveled and desiccated limbs. How long had she planned for this day? How many ages had passed since she had given up all hope of this day coming? She was again born of death and dust.
While the ogres in the chamber without wandered about, kicking aside fragments of crystal and ruin, she assumed the guise she had long prepared for this moment. She knew them well, these ogres, for she had listened to their talk for thousands of years, every time they came within her domain. She had seen them change and become different than they had been. She had considered this carefully. She was capable of assuming many forms, many shapes. The princess? No. Although in her mind this was her true form, these ogres saw human princesses as prey to be brutally raped and eaten. The Ogre Wench? No. She could set their blood to boiling, but they would only fight over her, and she wanted them all for her purposes. She did not want them spilling each other’s blood.
For a moment she appeared as she was, the skeletal remains of a once proud and powerful being; strangely akin to the hell-bitch who had guarded this prison, then she emerged from the cell that prevented her changing, and she shrunk in size. Her back hunched and the deep wrinkles of an ancient and terrible wisdom marked her witch’s face. A crooked walking stick completed the guise. She was the white-haired crone.
She knew their fear of witchery would protect her from attack, and her shriveled appearance would protect her from their boundless lusts, the power of which she could sense, even from another room.
She was ready. Let the world once again fear the wrath of the Wild Witch.
The four ogres spun toward the sound of a door creaking open, and Gutcrusher’s mace leaped into his hand. Instinctively they spread out, prepared to do battle with whatever had made the sound.
“Come and get it, by damn!” Gutcrusher yelled into the darkness.
For a moment, all was silent, and beyond the reach of the torchlight, it was as dark as the spaces between the stars. A shadowed figure shuffled into view, cloaked in rags and carrying a curled and knotted walking stick. Wolf growled menacingly.
“Who in the seven hells are you?” Gutcrusher demanded as an old woman walked into the light. The end of her stick began to glow like an ember, illuminating an ancient face, seamed and wrinkled and scarred, liberally scattered with hairy warts. All of the ogres recoiled from the witchlight. From a toothless mouth came a dry cackle.
“I am the wild witch of the Black Mountain. Who else?” She laughed again like a ribcage cracking. “You came looking for me, didn’t you? The wild witch to grant you three wishes as even your old tales tell?”
“Kill the old hag.” One-eye growled, and began stalking her with his stone hammer.
She gestured and the weapon seemed to come alive in his hand, like a serpent. He dropped it as if he’d been stung.
“Kill me?” She mocked. “You?”
Gutcrusher grinned wickedly. “Aye hag, if that’s what we bloody want, that’s what we’ll do. But first you tell me about these three wishes.”
Balls grunted. “Forget it Crusher. Everyone knows that’s a trick.” There were among the ogres stories of old crones who promised wishes, but inevitably, as Balls was correct in pointing out, the crones tricked and betrayed the ogres, usually killing them.
“Aye, there ain’t no such thing as wishes.” Wolf agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Shut up, boyos.” Gutcrusher replied cheerfully. “I’m the chief, remember? Now tell me witch woman. What about these wishes?”
“Your heart’s desire, within reason. You have freed me from my prison. Three wishes will I grant thee.” Her eyes glittered like a snake’s.
Gutcrusher laughed. His luck was running so good he could feel it. Ever since killing the wraith at the gate his luck had been running good. “Riches, Bitches and the Black God’s favor.” He replied, for it was a saying among the ogres.
One-eye echoed him. “Riches, bitches and the Black God’s favor. Aye, sure enough that’s it.”
“Done!” The crone replied. “Done and done. And who will dare to become the king of ogre kind?”
Gutcrusher’s eyes widened. This, too, was a legend among their kind. Once the ogres had been ruled by a king, and one day they would again, but it had been a long, long time. No ogre had dared lay claim to the title in many lifetimes, for it was a certainty that the hand of every chieftain from the Bone River to the City of the Damned would be raised against him. Nevertheless, Gutcrusher’s luck was running so high that he felt nothing was beyond him. “Me.” He told the old hag. “Make me the king.”
Wolf and One-eye stared at him like he’d gone mad, but Balls merely nodded. He was old, and someday soon he would catch a spear or a stone axe and go into the darkness forever. This could be fun and why the hells not?
The old crone looked at Gutcrusher thoughtfully. “Yes.” She nodded her head. “Yes. I see it. The size of a Muharl, but there’s a bit of the Vesthan in you, too. You are quick. You are bold. Yes, almost the original design. You shall be the Ogre King.”
“Gutcrusher’s my King.” Balls said. “Long live the fornicating king.”
“All that you need is here.” The old witch replied. “Come and let me show you.”
Fearlessly she turned her back on them and bade them follow, the glow of her walking stick illuminating the way as they walked down a series of long corridors, deeper and deeper into the Black Mountain. Each corridor was like the first, square cut passages with walls and ceiling like polished glass and the floor cloaked in thick dust. They left trudging footprints as they followed, and did not notice that she left none.
“The armory of Araous the Burner!” She declared as they came to one door, wrought of the same iron as the entrance to the mountain. She easily pushed open the door with a thrust of her left hand, and it screeched as it scraped across the floor. Wolf tried the door experimentally as they entered the room behind her, and found he could barely move it. The witch was strong.
Beyond the door stood a vast chamber, divided into hallways by half-walls of mortared black brick. Every two paces along the half walls hung large wrought iron hooks, set at the height of the ogres’ heads, and from each hook hung a long and dusty black coat of armor, with a high collar and thick plates to cover the chest and shoulders, and scales like those of a fish forming a lower hauberk. A round or kite-shaped shield lay at the foot of each suit. They were of a size to fit the ogres, and Gutcrusher immediately grabbed and began fondling a suit of the stuff. He grinned wickedly.
Wolf’s attention was drawn to the weapons that stood in neat stacks at the end of each hall. There were axes and spears, broadswords and maces, morning stars and flails. All of them were forged of the strange black metal that formed the armor, a substance that was like blacksteel, but that wasn’t. He grabbed a short sword of the kind called a gladius and held it, and it might have been made for him.
>
“Arm yourselves for battle, my dark heroes.” The witch said, and the ogres were eager to comply.
“We will be fornicating gods.” One-eye declared, and Wolf laughed in agreement.
“Aye, gods. By the burning soul of my mother. Skullbuster is dead.” Then he looked at Gutcrusher, who had donned a suit of the armor. “Your luck, Crusher. Your fornicating luck.” He shook his head in disbelief. “You are my king, you ugly bastard.” He went to one knee, a gesture that the ogres had once known but long forgotten.
“Aye.” One-eye agreed, with as much solemnity as an ogre is capable of. He, too, went to one knee. “You are the Ogre King.”
Gutcrusher laughed mightily. “Fornicate your mothers, you sons of whores. We are going to smash the world!”
Behind them the crone cackled cheerfully in the dark.
Chapter 37: Levin, Thimenian Longboat, Off the Eastern Banks of Northcraven Duchy
“You are so stupid, Levin of Mortentia. This is such a simple thing. Even a child understands this.”
Levin raised an eyebrow and looked at Jarlben. He had just introduced himself to Ohtar, son of Ohtar, a burly giant covered in so much thick red hair that he looked like a bizarre orange bear. Ohtar incidentally ‘climbed the Jager’s Horn in midwinter’, whatever that was.
“You don’t say, ‘I am Levin D’root.’” The Thimenian was explaining. “Nobody gives a good crap about some family name. You say, ‘I am Levin the Mortentian, I killed twenty ghouls on Damrek Island.’
“This way he knows who you are, not who your family is or where your town is, but who you are.
“Listen to me you thick-witted man. I will explain it again. When you are a child, you have done nothing. When you go to battle, you can carry a spear, but you don’t join in the shield wall. The man next to you, he knows nothing of you, because you have done nothing of which to boast. He does not know if your shield will fall or if he must protect his own flank.
“Now, I say, ‘I am Jarlben son of Jarlben, and I broke the neck of a Thimenian bull when I was fifteen years old.’ So, the man next to me, he knows I am strong, yes? He knows the Thimenian bull is a very mean son of a bitch, so he knows I am brave, yes?
“He will trust me to take my place in the shield wall and he does not need to watch his left side, for he knows that I am there.
“Now, Ohtar Ohtar’s son who is not Ohtar the Orange you just met, he says ‘I am Ohtar the son of Ohtar the left handed, and I lifted the millstone at Rajasgaard.’ So I know because he is left-handed that I must put him on the left side of the shield wall, and I know he is strong, you see?”
Levin nodded. Although he didn’t care for being called ‘stupid’ and ‘thick-witted’, his gratitude for the Thimenian’s rescue outweighed any protest he might make.
“Now, Levin of Mortentia, you say it.”
“I am Levin of Mortentia, and I killed twenty ghouls on Damrek Island.” Levin responded obediently, to Jarlben’s approving nod. “Although I might add that I killed at least a dozen before you lot arrived there.”
“Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. You are Mortentian, and everyone knows what terrible liars Mortentians are. So you should only boast of that which was witnessed by good and honest Thimenians. I am glad you understand now. You maybe aren’t so terribly stupid. Perhaps I will find you a wife in Hrulthan’s Steading.”
Levin laughed. “I’ve heard that Thimenian women are something else.” He replied.
Jarlben bit back an oath. “Listen, Levin, and hear me well. Thimenian men walk honestly under the naked sky and we know no fear until we come under the roof of our wife. Then we walk with care. Thimenian woman will kill a weak man, I promise you.”
The ship was moving southward at a distance midway between the Mortentian mainland and the Lost Ladies, her big red sail turned side-on to the wind on a lazy sailor’s tack. At the prow of the vessel stood a single Thimenian warrior, shoulder’s back, with his nose to the wind as if he were a hunting hound. Their course was designed to keep them out of sight of the main Mortentian sea lanes to the west, and they dared not approach any closer to the shore.
“I will not lie to you, Levin.” Jarlben explained. “If it were the reaving time, we might be looking for a village to plunder, but today we hunt different sport.”
“Different?”
“Yes. We are on a vengeance. Five weeks ago the Brizaki attacked Jomar Jomarson’s steading hard by the city of Valtheim. The bastards took thralls and burned three longboats. So king Feomar he says for us to go forth and find some Brizaki to pay the price, yes?”
“I understand.” Levin replied. Revenge seemed to be a universal principle.
“Well, so we took our longship out to go reaving the Brizaki, but on our way to Vherador we see this sneaking Brizaki warship at anchor. Now, this is not the usual thing, for us to see them, because the sneaky devils they wrap their ships in fog. But this one, it is there, and I let Brito get a good sniff on it.”
“A good sniff?”
“Yes, of course. Brito from Valtheim, he is our hunter. Once he gets on the trail of an enemy, he can follow it forever. Now this fool of a Brizaki, he comes to Mortentia, of all places, sailing in the night time, using the stars to guide him.”
“But Brito, he is not fooled by the night or the darkness. Like I say, he can track an enemy anywhere. This foolish Brizaki has come nigh onto Mortentia, where he cannot wrap himself in fog and he cannot call the wind. The magic is dead in Mortentia, you see.”
“Oh yes, I know about that.” Replied Levin. He wondered how many other truths were commonly known everywhere in the world except among the ordinary folk of Mortentia, and how many other old wives’ tales were going to turn out to be true.
“We are not far from him now. We caught a glimpse of him yestereve, and Brito is excited.” The fierce look in the Thimenian’s eye and the eagerness with which he spoke chilled Levin slightly. “We will hunt him in the night, and with luck we will find him before the morning, and if he is lying on your coastline, we will attack him with the sun behind us.”
Levin wondered at the Thimenian’s brave words. Having seen Brizaki fire in action, what could the men in the longship do against it? Even if magic was dead in Mortentia, as everyone seemed to agree, Levin was not convinced that the Brizaki fire he’d seen in Torth was magical at all, and one pot smashed in the rigging of this longship would mean the death of all of these men, no matter how fiercely they boasted.
Still, these Thimenians had fought Brizaki before, and didn’t seem particularly worried about the prospect. Of course, from what he’d heard, not much worried them at all. If ever a crew of men seemed ready to charge into the flaming hell of the abyss with a bucket of water, it was these.
“What is the name of your ship?” He asked Jarlben after a moment.
“Name of the ship?” Jarlben responded. “Why would we give the ship a name? I call it my ship. Sometimes I call it a boat. Sometimes I call it a leaky son of a tark.
“We don’t name our ships in Thimenia, Levin. The ship is just a tool to get us from here to there. You give a ship a name, you start thinking it has feelings or ideas. It is nothing but wood and craft, and someday I will have to set the son-of-a-tark on fire to deny my enemies the use of it. Or when I die they will put me in it, set it on fire and send it to the winds. No point giving it a name.
“Besides,” he added after a bit, “give the ship a name and some fool will want to die protecting it, or the captain will want to sink with it. That’s the kind of foolishness you get with naming ships.”
Night seemed slow in coming to Levin. Coril Jemms had said that the farther north one went, the longer the days were in the summer time, but that had seemed ridiculous of course. The days and nights were the same length no matter where you stood, Levin had patiently explained, and most of the crew of the Sally’s High Touch had agreed with him. Now, as a fine mist the color of autumn leaves slowly crept out from the forest and onto the sea, Levin wondered if m
aybe Coril had been right. The twilight hung on a long time before true night began to settle on the Thimenian ship.
Although he did not seem to be as skilled a surgeon as Elo had been, the Thimenians had their own medic, a hairy handed dark giant named Goric son of Goric, whose boast, translated by Jarlben, was that he had once strangled a Khumenov tusker, whatever that was. Goric’s hands weren’t gentle as he probed Levin’s various wounds, the most significant of which was a bleeding hole above his left hip, where a fire-hardened spear point had punctured him slightly. Goric rubbed some foul smelling unguent on the wound, which created a stinging sensation that was worse than the wound itself had been. He then wrapped a clean white cloth around Levin’s middle, leaving Levin gasping and writhing for several minutes. When finally the pain faded to a dull and itchy ache, he could see a few stars through the mist, and he was bathed in sweat and very tired. He fell asleep to the rhythm of the Thimenians heaving on the long oars and the longboat rocking its way through the light waves.
Before he fell asleep he wondered where the Thimenians were taking him, but he was not worried. It had to be better than Damrek Island, and somehow he would find his way back to Mortentia.
A warm and misty glow surrounded the Thimenian ship when Levin awoke. His side still ached a little, but the itch was gone, thanks be to Lio. A peek under the edge of the bandage showed that whatever Goric had rubbed on there had had some salutary effect. The edge of the puncture wound in his side was slightly red, but it was no longer bleeding and it was cool to the touch.
The Thimenians were awake and at their tasks, prompting Levin to wonder if they had slept at all during the night. The sun had not yet risen, but the silvery morning mist held its promise. He had slept on an ass polished wooden bench toward the longship’s prow, on one of the few rows not given to oarsmen, and a warm, fur covered hide lay draped over him. He felt his forehead, and it was cool and dry. No fever. He’d been worried about fever.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 37