He checked his head wrap, then lumbered out of the boat, onto the docks. He began to whistle an aimless tune as he strolled, his heavy feet thumping on the wooden planks.
Here near shore, the sea smelled differently. The fishermen would gut their catches in the afternoons, tossing the offal to the crabs in the bay. So the clean salt smell of the sea had heavier overtones of death and decay.
He passed a few women mending fishing nets on the docks, and as he did, all eyes peered up at him. As he feared, no one as massive as he could hope to make his way through town undetected.
He nodded politely, grunted as he passed, and his face flushed as he felt their stares follow.
At last the wooden docks met the land, and stairs climbed some fifty feet, scaling a rock embankment. He thumped up the stairs. There were fish stalls all about, the heart of the village’s market, and people filled the streets in droves.
For barbarians, he decided, the village was surprisingly well kept. The streets were clean and well cobbled, and the market stalls were painted in bright colors—canary, crimson, deep forest green. Each stall served as the front of a home, and the houses were so close together that many of them shared common walls, thus conserving heat. Wildflowers seemed to sprout up from any little patch of dirt at the front of the houses.
But farther up on the hill, enormous longhouses could be seen shrouded in fog, each ringed with tall picket fences. Cows ambled about up there, while chickens and geese scratched in the yards. Each long house was made from huge beams, and served as a fortress for the families that lived inside.
Aaath Ulber bumbled through the market, peering at giant eels that hung from hooks in one stall; he stopped to watch one merchant toss a load of crabs into a huge boiling pot. Everywhere, fishmongers called out, “Cod, cod—so fresh he’s still wiggling!” or “Shark, shark—eat him before he eats you!”
But it wasn’t fish that Aaath Ulber wanted. He was looking for fresh vegetables, perhaps a young piglet.
He stopped for a moment, heard voices up the street to the north, other merchants hawking their wares.
He worked through the crowd, trying not to step on anyone. Everywhere, people stopped to gawk. Most didn’t even bother to hide their stares.
So he strode along, still whistling. He stopped for a moment at a cross street, took an instant to look back, to see if he could spot Rain. But there were too many faces in the crowd, and he didn’t dare search for long.
So he moved forward, hoping that she could see him well enough.
At last he reached a vendor who sold produce—fresh blackberries from the woods, wild mushrooms, hazelnuts, honeycomb—and a smattering of herbs from the garden—leeks and parsnips, carrots and tulip roots.
He grunted and mostly pointed at what he wanted, feigning an accent when he was forced to barter. He paid too much, giving the woman a plain golden ring for a good deal of food, then tucked it in a makeshift rucksack.
He moved on, stopped to buy that piglet he’d been hungry for. He found a nice fifty-pounder, traded it for some steel, and then tucked it up under one arm. The pig squealed like mad. It had been castrated in the not-so-distant past, and apparently feared that Aaath Ulber might try it again.
There is nothing that attracts attention like a giant in the marketplace holding a squealing pig, Aaath Ulber discovered. Every eye turned to him, and it seemed that folks two hundred yards down the street all stopped to stare.
So Aaath Ulber held the pig and scratched its head, trying to soothe it with a few soft words.
He wanted to get back to the boat now, but there was so much more that he wanted here in town. He was hoping for some nice pastries for Myrrima, or perhaps a new dress, anything to put a smile in her eyes. And he wanted cloth to make new clothes for himself and everyone else on the ship. But mostly, his family needed news—and weapons.
So he quieted his piglet, then kept on walking. After purchasing four loaves of bread, which went straight into his rucksack, he found that his piglet stopped squealing altogether and amused himself by sniffing at the sack and grunting quietly.
At last he found a man in a stall who sold knives of all kinds. He stopped.
The man was old—astonishingly old. His face was lined and wrinkled, and his red hair had all gone silver long ago. He wore a beard cropped short, and dressed in robes appropriate for a merchant—not so rich as to garner envy but not so poor as to earn disdain.
Yet there was wisdom in his eyes, and he moved quickly enough when Aaath Ulber stopped to study his wares.
“Do you sometimes feel that something is missing from your life, good sir?” the merchant asked. “Perhaps it’s a knife—something to butcher your pig there? Or would you like to see something larger, something more appropriate to a man your size?”
Aaath Ulber peered at the merchant’s wares. There were long knives with notched blades for cutting bread, and small knives that a woman might use for peeling apples. But what interested Aaath Ulber most were the knives against the back wall. There was a pair of fine dueling knives—not too fancy, mind you. It wasn’t the polished steel that you might find in Heredon, with silver finger guards and scenery etched into the blades. They were cheap, sensible—the kind of knives that some warrior lad might take into battle.
“Do you have anything larger?” Aaath Ulber asked. “A man my size needs a blade to match.”
The old merchant eyed him for a long moment. “It’s not pigs that you’re wanting to kill,” the fellow mused. “I don’t have much call for real weapons, you understand, but I have something that might interest you. . . .”
He turned and went to the display case on the far wall, then pulled out a hidden drawer beneath. It opened to reveal a tall sword, the kind that the barbarians here favored—nearly seven feet long. Few men were big enough to wield such a blade, but Aaath Ulber thought it just a bit too short. He knew that he couldn’t afford it.
Yet the old man laid it on the display table in front of him. “You’d have to travel many a mile,” he promised, “to find its equal.”
Aaath Ulber nodded, but did not pick it up. Between a rucksack over his shoulder and a pig under one arm, there was not much that he could do.
He peered down at it appreciatively.
“You’ve an accent,” the old man said. “Where do you hail from?”
Aaath Ulber grunted, “To the east—Landesfallen.” He glanced back over the crowds, spotted Rain’s dark green cloak. The girl was standing near some boys who were play-fighting with sticks. Aaath Ulber turned away quickly.
The old man fixed him with a stare, and nodded appreciatively. Aaath Ulber prepared for the old fellow to hit him with a barrage of questions: “How are things on the far side of the world?” “Did you have a pleasant voyage?” That sort of thing. But the old fellow simply got worry lines in his eyes, leaned forward, and whispered, “They’re looking for you, you know.”
Aaath Ulber was certain that the old man had him confused with someone else.
“For me?” Aaath Ulber asked. “How could that be?”
“Don’t know,” the fellow whispered secretively. “There’s a giant—sailing from the northeast. That’s all that I’ve heard. But they’re asking for you.” Then he peered straight into Aaath Ulber’s eyes and urged, “Take the sword!”
“I . . . don’t have that kind of money,” Aaath Ulber said honestly.
But the old man smiled gamely, the look of a soldier who had fought for far too many years. “The price is cheap, to the right man. All that I ask is a wyrmling’s head!”
Aaath Ulber wasn’t surprised that the man had heard of wyrmlings. “What news do you have of them?”
The old man’s eyes suddenly went wide, and he hissed, “Watch your back! They’re here!”
A woman cried out, perhaps a hundred yards behind, and a deep growl rumbled through the crowd—a wyrmling curse.
Aaath Ulber straightened, whirled. Two wyrmlings came striding through the crowded market like small h
ills.
Wyrmlings in broad daylight! Aaath Ulber realized in dismay.
He’d never seen such a thing. The sun blinded wyrmlings and could burn their pale skin.
They wore helms and ring mail ornately carved from the bones of a world wyrm, so that it was the color of yellowed teeth, and their flesh and hair was as white and as unwholesome as maggots.
They’d seen him already, and one shouted in the tongue of Caer Luciare, “You!”
The wyrmlings rushed him, shoving commoners aside, and the crowd could not part fast enough.
They have endowments! Aaath Ulber realized. Each of them had at least two endowments of metabolism, he guessed, by the speed of their movements.
He didn’t have time to run. He could hardly hope to fight. The wyrmlings streaked toward him.
He dropped his rucksack, reached behind himself, and grabbed a wicked fish knife from the table. Its blade was narrow and long. He figured that it would fit nicely between the chinks of a wyrmling’s armor.
He grabbed the handle, held it in his palm, with the blade flat against the inside of his wrist.
His heart was pumping loudly in his ears, and Aaath Ulber’s thoughts came swiftly. He studied their weapons. Each had a battle-ax sheathed to his back, and each wore a pair of “daggers” on his hips—each dagger the size of a bastard sword. One carried a long meat hook, and both had heavy iron war darts tucked into their belts. Aaath Ulber noticed how the wyrmlings peered about, their heads swaying from side to side. They were alert for danger, watching the crowd warily. Though they homed in on him, he could tell that they expected trouble.
I can use that fear against them, he thought.
I can’t hope to beat two wyrmling runelords using normal tactics.
He didn’t have an endowment to his name anymore. He couldn’t match these monsters—not in speed, not in size, not in strength. But perhaps he could hope to outwit them.
Sir Borenson had studied the fighting styles from a dozen countries, and had mastered them all. Aaath Ulber suspected that he’d have to pull from Borenson’s hoard of knowledge to win this fight, show these wyrmlings some tricks they’d never seen before.
The wyrmlings neared him. It had not been five seconds since he’d spotted them.
“You there!” one of the wyrmlings shouted. “Come with us!” He reached behind his shoulder to grab the huge battle-ax sheathed on his back.
Aaath Ulber picked that moment to strike. He hurled his pig at the monster’s head. The pig squealed in terror, lofted into the air. The wyrmling’s eyes went wide, and he reached up to swat the pig away.
At that moment, Aaath Ulber lunged, throwing all of his speed and strength into one terrific burst, his hand blurring as he sought to strike.
The wyrmling was fast. He roared a battle challenge and knocked the pig out of the air as easily as if it were a pillow. He reached back and slid his ax from its sheath, twirled it as he threw it the air, and then caught the handle—too late.
Aaath Ulber’s diversion had served him well. He slid his long fish knife into the wyrmling’s armor—prodding for its kidney, then twisting. Black blood spurted from the wound, warming Aaath Ulber’s hand. The wyrmling roared in pain and surprise, then tried to step back. Aaath Ulber placed a foot behind the monster’s heel and threw his shoulder into the creature’s chest, using the wyrmling’s momentum against it, so that it tripped and fell.
Aaath Ulber grabbed one of the monster’s poisoned war darts and palmed it as the creature dropped.
The second wyrmling had already gained his weapon. This one pulled his “knife” from its sheath and halted for a moment, warily.
Already Aaath Ulber had palmed his knife again, and now stood with both hands in fists, so that the creature wouldn’t know which hand held a weapon. But of course, at the moment, Aaath Ulber had a weapon in each hand.
The Muyyatin knife tricks, Aaath Ulber thought. That might do it.
The Muyyatin assassins had made an art of hiding weapons, of pulling daggers from hidden folds in their clothing, or switching weapon hands as they whirled about, seeking to gain the element of surprise.
The wounded wyrmling roared in frustration and scrabbled up from the ground. Aaath Ulber hoped that the creature had only seconds to live, but he couldn’t be sure. The wyrmling was enormous, over eight feet tall, and the fish knife might not have reached all the way into monster’s kidney.
I’ll know soon enough, Aaath Ulber thought.
If he’d hit the kidney, the monster would go into shock within seconds.
His companion raced up behind and roared like a lion, urging the fallen wyrmling into battle. All around, the folks in the marketplace were screaming, fleeing, so that a battlefield was opening up around them.
The second wyrmling swatted with the back of his hand, slapping aside a woman who was carrying a small babe. The blow took her head off and sent a spray of blood over the crowed. People shouted in terror and lurched back.
In that instant, it seemed that a curtain of red dropped before Aaath Ulber’s eyes. He drew a breath in surprise, and his heart pounded, so that he heard a distant drumming in his ears.
He lost all conscious thought as a berserker’s fury swept over him.
18
WULFGAARD
From where the sun stands and from this day forward, I swear to fight evil where ever it may be found—first in my own heart, and then in my fellow man.
—Oath of the Brotherhood of the Wolf
The morning sun could not quite penetrate the patches of mist that veiled the village, and Rain felt as if her old clothes were becoming too worn, too insubstantial to keep out the chill. But when the wyrmlings appeared, she felt a thrill run down her spine bitterer than the cold.
She heard the deep growls behind her, like something that might come from a frowth giant, then turned to see the wyrmlings.
Her first thought was that they were beautiful. They had carved on their bone armor and helms for thousands of hours, gouging in strange pictographs and various knots, so that their work rivaled the finest scrimshaw carved into ivory that she had ever seen.
But then she saw the wyrmlings’ eyes—soulless and cruel, a pale green that made them look like pits of ice. Their cheekbones were thick and their foreheads were thickened, as if over the millennia they had bred armor into their own bodies, and their mouths with their overlarge canines were impossibly cruel.
All of her perception of them was gathered in a split second as the monsters raged past.
Then people in the marketplace began to shout. Vendors threw blankets over their wares, while townsfolk sought to escape.
A big man shoved Rain in his hurry to reach an alley, throwing her down. She still hadn’t gained her land legs yet, and so her balance was off.
Children were screaming, but the townsfolk didn’t clear a path fast enough, and flecks of blood rained through the air as one of the wyrmlings knocked a woman out of the way.
Rain leapt to her feet just in time to see Aaath Ulber attack. He had no endowments to his name, but he had a lifetime of training—no, she realized, two lifetimes of training.
He moved with blinding speed, stabbing. He seemed to leap into one of the wyrmlings, slugging it, but then Rain caught a glimpse of a flashing knife. The second wyrmling burst toward him with blinding speed, wielding a huge ax.
Aaath Ulber met him with a scream, a strange animal howl that Rain hadn’t heard since he’d butchered her father.
Now he took his rage and lashed out at a wyrmling that towered above him. The wyrmling’s ax fell in a blur, and Aaath Ulber reached up and grabbed it. As he did, he leapt in the air and kicked with both feet, crushing the wyrmling’s knee.
The wyrmling fell back, snarling in pain. His companion had been knocked over, but now he regained his knees. He lunged, swinging a meat hook down low, and caught Aaath Ulber in the calf of his left leg. Viciously the wyrmling jerked, pulling Aaath Ulber down.
After that, Rain didn’t s
ee much of what happened. The crowd was screaming, and several people rushed in front of her, making for the alley.
“Run!” some woman shouted. “The guards will be down on all of us!”
Just then, Rain heard a strange clacking sound—bone on bone—and peered down the street. A dozen more wyrmlings were rushing around a corner.
She heard Aaath Ulber snarling, while wyrmlings shouted and roared, and she suddenly realized that Aaath Ulber could not hope to win against so many.
A wise man might have run, but Aaath Ulber was in his berserker’s fury, striking out blindly against wyrmling runelords, though he didn’t have a chance in the world.
Many of the townsfolk stood riveted by the spectacle. Some men even dared shout words of encouragement to Aaath Ulber.
Rain put her back to a wall and stopped for a moment, staring. The crowd opened enough so that she saw Aaath Ulber on the ground, grappling with a much larger foe, struggling to rip the wyrmling’s throat out with his teeth.
But one wyrmling, bleeding furiously from the face, had leapt to his feet, and now he kicked Aaath Ulber in the ribs so hard that Rain heard bones snapping.
Aaath Ulber rolled into the street, snarling and furious, bereft of weapons. The bloodied wyrmling blurred into motion, leaping on Aaath Ulber, grappling with him, throwing punches with a steel gauntlet.
He struck Aaath Ulber in the face, once, twice, then gave a mighty blow that felled the giant, so that he dropped limp to the ground.
The wyrmlings then turned on the crowd and took vengeance upon those who had urged Aaath Ulber on. One of the wyrmlings grabbed up a great sword from the booth and swung, decapitating two men in a single blow.
By then the rest of the troops were arriving, and they circled Aaath Ulber, kicking and growling like a pack of wild dogs, while others fell upon the townsfolk.
It appeared that even being here, even watching Aaath Ulber fight, was deemed a crime worthy of death.
The townsfolk were rushing away. Merchants had ducked behind their stalls, often with women and children leaping in to seek cover.
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