Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North

by Luke Scull

  ‘I’ll find a way to help us,’ Yllandris whispered. ‘I’m almost a woman now. I’ll find somewhere for us both to live, so he can’t hurt you any more. Just wait and see.’

  Her mother smiled at her and took her chin gently in her hands. ‘I don’t doubt it. You’re strong and beautiful and clever. Whatever happens, I will never regret marrying your father. Because without him I wouldn’t have you.’

  ‘I’ll make you proud,’ Yllandris said. She hugged her mother close: close enough to hear her heart beating.

  ‘You already have, child,’ her mother replied, running trembling fingers through her hair.

  Yllandris opened her eyes. Early-morning sunlight seeped through the cracks in the roof far above, illuminating motes of dust dancing golden between thick wooden beams. For a moment she was hopelessly disorientated. She felt someone tugging on her hair and twisted her neck, half expecting to see her mother smiling down at her.

  Instead she stared up into the sweaty face of a young boy. He blinked at her uncertainly. ‘Rinny said to wake you,’ he mumbled. He fiddled with her hair a moment longer, then wiped his nose with a grubby hand and stifled a big yawn.

  Yllandris sat up and looked around, slowly familiarizing herself with her surroundings. She was curled up on the floor of the Foundry, in one of the many storage rooms off the central forge chamber. The heat was stifling: her shawl was covered in sweat and the dry skin on her cheek bothered her more than usual.

  She remembered waking in the early hours of the morning, feeling terrified and alone. She thought she had heard a mysterious bang coming from the direction of the Great Lodge – a sound like a clap of thunder. Still half-asleep, she had walked the short distance from her hut to the welcoming glow of the Foundry and settled down among the town’s orphans. Several of the children were watching her now, wide-eyed and sleepy-faced.

  ‘Rinny?’ Yllandris repeated slowly.

  The boy nodded. ‘She’s with Yorn and a stranger with weird eyes. The iron man is here too!’

  The iron man? Yllandris rose unsteadily. She felt uneasy, and a moment later she realized it was the absence of noise that unsettled her. For weeks the Foundry had reverberated with the pounding of hammers on anvils and the screeching of bellows. Now the roar of the furnace was the only sound she could hear through the thick stone walls.

  She brushed herself down and then made her way towards the source of the heat, heedless of the sweat that trickled down her face and made a damp mop of her black hair. As recently as two months ago the thought of facing the world in such a state would have horrified her. Since then she had seen the face of true horror and it had chased away such petty vanities. They belonged to a different woman now.

  She slowed as she approached the pair of huge furnaces that dominated the forge chamber. They still burned bright, but elsewhere anvils lay unused, hammers and tongs haphazardly left atop them. The blacksmiths had apparently downed tools and vacated the Foundry in a hurry. All except old Braxus, who had been tasked with overseeing the endless production of new weapons the King had ordered. He sagged before the leftmost furnace, looking exhausted.

  To either side of the blacksmith were Yorn, and the Northman with the bloodshot eyes whose face seemed familiar. The third Kingsman, the armoured warrior who had helped murder the Black Reaching sorceresses, was facing Braxus and appeared to be remonstrating with him. Corinn waited timidly nearby.

  ‘Yllandris,’ Yorn grunted when he saw her. ‘The Shaman’s forces are marching on Heartstone. Your sisters are gathering at the north gate.’

  Yllandris’s mouth was suddenly dry. ‘Did Shranree send you to fetch me?’

  Yorn shook his head and gestured at Corinn. ‘The girl told me you were here. Figured I’d better let you know.’ The expression on his face might have been one of pity.

  ‘Thank you,’ Yllandris stammered. There was no telling what Shranree would do if she were late this time. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. Shranree doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now. I’ve made my choice. Soon it will be over. She hoped she had the courage to follow through with her plan.

  The Kingsman in the plate armour raised a gauntleted hand to wipe sweat from his brow, then folded his arms and scowled at Braxus. The movement was accompanied by a faint clanking sound.

  The iron man, Yllandris realized. She had never seen anyone covered in so much steel. He was encased from head to toe.

  ‘You see this sword?’ The Kingsman drew his blade and held it up before him. ‘This was forged by Dranthe, the finest steel smith in Tarbonne. I won it from one of the Old Masters in the Circle ten years past. With this weapon I have fought a dozen wars throughout the Shattered Realms. With this weapon I have killed a hundred men.’ The warrior tapped the blade and turned it slightly, showing off the perfect edge in the red light of the furnace behind him. ‘This sword can cleave through the strongest armour. The balance is so exquisite that I could place it tip down on that anvil there and it would not topple. This is art, created by an artist.’ He sheathed his weapon and turned to retrieve something from the table beside him.

  ‘This’, he said, holding up two halves of a broken longsword, ‘is shit. Shat out by a man with not the slightest concern for the warriors expected to carry it into battle. Tell me, blacksmith, what happens when a man attempts to parry steel with excrement?’

  ‘Excrement?’ Braxus repeated, his heavy brow creased in confusion.

  The Kingsman sighed. ‘Shit, Braxus. Excrement means shit. But permit me to answer my own question. The man with shit in his hands dies. I know this because no fewer than seventeen of the town’s defenders have perished as a result of the flawed steel foisted upon them by you.’ He flung the broken sword away. The shattered blade and hilt struck the ground with an angry clatter.

  ‘It’s not our fault,’ Braxus said, waving a meaty hand at the pile of swords stacked in the corner of the forge. ‘We don’t have time to temper them properly. We’re doing the best we can.’

  ‘Perhaps you should find men to assist you. Men instead of children.’

  ‘They’ve got nowhere else to stay,’ Braxus protested. ‘The orphans help out with a few errands; we give them something to eat and a place to sleep. There ain’t no harm in it. We’re doing them a kindness.’

  The Kingsman gestured at Corinn. There was bitter amusement in his heavy-lidded eyes. ‘Old men and their kindnesses… I know how that goes. There aren’t many lies a man won’t tell himself to excuse the dark corners of his soul.’

  Braxus’s face flushed crimson and he took a step towards the Kingsman. He was past sixty, but his neck was as thick as an ox’s and his arms rippled with muscle from a lifetime spent hammering iron. ‘What’s your meaning?’

  The Kingsman sneered and his gaze settled on Yllandris. ‘It’s not hard to understand why you like them so young, Braxus. Just look at this one. Only twenty years on her and she’s already fit for pasture. In Tarbonne, a wife who allowed herself to go to seed so quickly would find her marriage annulled. You should be ashamed, woman.’

  Yllandris felt like she had been punched in the gut. She reached up to her face, self-consciously trying to cover the angry red patch on her cheek. The familiar trembling began in her arms.

  ‘Do you have what the King requested?’ The speaker was the Kingsman with the bloodshot eyes. His voice was soft, velvet-like, and he wore a golden key on a chain around his neck. Yllandris focused on his face, trying to remember whence she knew him. Anything to take her mind off the shakes.

  Wulgreth, she realized. The Northman who went missing months ago, during the march to Frosthold. He was lost. Presumed dead. How did he survive? Why is he here?

  Braxus turned to the Kingsman and handed him a tiny piece of metal. It was smooth and rounded, like the barrel of the strange device Wulgreth had given Krazka on the hill outside Heartstone. Wulgreth examined it for a moment with his strange bloodshot eyes, and then he stashed it in a bag at his belt.

  Yorn cleared his thr
oat. ‘We’re done here. Braxus, grab a sword. We’ll need every able-bodied man in Heartstone at the gates once the Shaman arrives. Meredith—’

  ‘That’s Sir Meredith, you bloody savage! I was knighted by the Rag King himself!’

  Yorn’s teeth ground together as he struggled to keep his calm. ‘We ain’t in the Lowlands now. We answer to only one king and that’s the Butcher King. The man we’re sworn to protect.’

  Sir Meredith grimaced. ‘You need not remind me.’ He turned on his heel and stormed out of the Foundry.

  Yllandris watched his noisy exit. She shifted from leg to leg in an effort to stop the shakes taking hold.

  ‘What’s his problem?’ Braxus demanded.

  Yorn spat. ‘He spent too much time down south. Got some queer ideas in his head. Good with a sword though.’

  The three men departed, leaving Yllandris alone with Corinn and a few orphans who had dared poke their heads into the chamber. ‘Are you okay?’ Corinn asked gently, her face filled with compassion. Yllandris felt suddenly ashamed of her weakness.

  ‘Yes,’ she lied. She wasn’t okay, she wanted to break down and cry, but she needed to be at the north gate before Shranree noticed she was missing or her plan would be in ruins.

  A small hand took hold of hers. She looked down to see the boy who had woken her moments ago. He stared up at her shyly.

  ‘I don’t like the iron man. Or the Northman. They have ugly eyes. Not like you: you’re pretty and kind. And you took my friends away to the better place. I wanna go there too. Can I?’

  Yllandris swallowed a sob and ran from the Foundry.

  Twenty-six Years Ago

  ‘I can smell it. Like flesh boiled too long in the pot.’

  Moshka’s wizened face twisted in disgust. Blink demons were among the rarest of their kind, highly cunning and able to evade even the most determined pursuers. The fiend had led them on a chase through half of the High Fangs, from the deep valleys of the East Reaching to the great meres of the neighbouring Lake Reaching and then south to here, the Green Reaching.

  This time, Brodar Kayne would not allow the demon to escape.

  The three men spurred their horses forward. Spring in the Green Reaching was a sight to behold. Gently rolling hills and emerald grass stretched out as far as the eye could see, dotted by small farms that kept the Heartland region supplied with food when the harsh winter months turned it into a white wasteland. The Greenmen were often derided as a soft people, handier with a plough than a sword, but the fact was that without them the Treaty that had held for the last few hundred years would never have endured. Even the meekest of men would march on their neighbours when starvation loomed.

  They galloped past fields of maize, low fences surrounding rows of vegetables that would eventfully find their way to tables in Heartstone and Yarrow, even as far north as Lister in the Black Reaching. Nervous faces watched them as they rode by. Wardens rarely had reason to venture so far west. When they did, it could mean only bad news.

  Moshka drew his horse in alongside Kayne’s. The veronyi had left his home in the mountains to accompany them on this hunt. Witch doctors were said to possess strange powers and insights beyond the ken of even the Shaman. Not magic like the sorceresses possessed, or the spark of power that saw young males transcend and take beast form when they came of age – no, the wise men of the high places, the veronyi, possessed an affinity with the spirits of the land itself.

  ‘He’s near,’ Moskha hissed.

  Kayne frowned. They weren’t far from Beregund. If the demon reached the capital before they caught up with it, there was no telling what kind of carnage it would wreak. The warriors of the Green Reaching had no real experience fighting fiends. It was the duty of Kayne and his brothers to ensure that none made it through the Borderland.

  ‘Borun,’ he shouted. ‘We’re getting close.’

  His friend turned in his saddle. ‘You ever fought a blink demon, Kayne?’

  ‘No, not fought. But I reckon I know about ’em better than most.’ His hands gripped the reins tighter and his teeth clenched together. He remembered Dannard’s scream. It still haunted his dreams, even after all these years.

  They rode hard until they came to a small farmstead next to a field set aside for pasture. Kayne noticed immediately that something was very wrong. The field was covered in wool, great clumps of it, as if the sheep that grazed the land had somehow shrugged off their coats and fled. As the men drew nearer, Kayne saw that the wool was still attached to the skin of the animals, which had been stripped right off the bone. There was no sign of the carcasses.

  Just then a terrible whining noise cut through the nicker of the horses. It came from over by the pen near the farmhouse. Kayne turned, and his gorge rose at the sight that greeted him.

  It was a shepherd’s dog – or at least what remained of the animal. The hind legs had been torn off at the knees and the snout was horribly mangled, one eye hanging from its socket and the other rolling in mindless terror. The dog was attempting to drag itself away from the pen, desperate to escape whatever was inside the enclosure. Its mind hadn’t caught up to the fact it should be dead.

  The three men slid from their mounts. Moshka hobbled over to the dog and knelt down. The old man whispered a few soothing words and placed his hands around the animal’s throat. It stopped whimpering and a moment later went still. The veronyi released his grip and lowered the dead animal gently to the grass. Then he stood and brushed off his tattered old robes, the bone bangles around his wrists clinking out an eerie tune in the afternoon sun. ‘The demon is in the pen.’

  Kayne nodded and drew his sword.

  ‘We’ll take its head back to the Keep,’ Borun growled. ‘Give it to old Kalgar as a retirement gift. Maybe Orgrim will mount it in the Commander’s chambers when he moves in.’ The Warden-in-training hefted his great battleaxe and gave it an experimental swing. He had shot up like a weed in the last year or two. He was as tall as Kayne and already stronger than many warriors ten years his senior.

  ‘You’re not a Warden yet. Leave this to me.’

  Borun snorted. ‘Six years as a spirit-scout counts for nothing? I’m a match for any man at Watcher’s Keep save you, Kayne. Let me help kill this bastard.’

  ‘I said no, brother.’

  Borun’s face flushed with anger. ‘Then why bring me along? I guided you here. You telling me I have to stand and watch while you go it alone? Or is that what you want? “The great Brodar Kayne. First Warden to kill a blink demon single-handed in fifty years.” That what this is about? Your reputation?’

  ‘I ain’t doing it by myself, Borun. I’ve got Moshka.’

  The farmhouse door creaked open and a female face peeked out. Kayne caught a glimpse of extraordinary steel-coloured eyes, wide with terror. He brought a finger to lips, motioning at the girl to go back inside. ‘Guard that door,’ he told Borun. ‘Worst comes to the worst, you buy whoever’s inside time to escape.’

  The young Warden-in-training still didn’t look pleased, but he turned and walked over to the farmhouse, positioning himself in front of the doorway.

  ‘Moshka. I reckon it’s time,’ Kayne said.

  The veronyi threw back his head and began to chant words Kayne didn’t recognize. The old man’s eyes rolled up to expose the whites beneath. The straggly grey hair that fell around his bald crown floated up of its own accord, forming a wispy circle around his skull.

  A moment later, the ground beneath the pen began to tremble. Soon the earth shook as if struck by the fist of some angry god below. Kayne felt the first wave of demon fear assail him but it was a familiar sensation now, robbed of the raw power that had threatened to break his resolve during his first few years in the Borderland.

  The sheep pen shook violently. Somewhere within, the demon howled, a sound that cut through the passing of years to stir the embers of memory to life.

  Kayne was back in Riverdale, hearing his brother’s screams, tears spilling down his face yet too terrified
to go back and help. He’d always been the big brother, the one Dannard would turn to when the other boys in the village had bullied him for being too soft, too shy. They’d left him alone once Dannard’s older brother had a word with them. Brodar Kayne had killed a man when he was eight years old. He wasn’t scared of anything.

  At least that’s what they had thought, in the naivety of youth. As it turned out, Dannard’s big brother had shit himself and hidden in a ditch and sobbed himself raw the night the blink demon ravaged Riverdale.

  The fiend howled again. Kayne embraced the terror as he had been taught on the training yards of Watcher’s Keep, turned it into cold fury and made of it a shield. He stalked towards the enclosure, longsword raised. He couldn’t change the past… but he could claim vengeance for Dannard and his father and the rest of the village.

  There was a ripple ahead of him, like hot air shimmering on a summer morning after a storm. An instant later the blink demon appeared, melting out of nothingness as if an invisible curtain had just been pulled aside.

  It looked like a Highland cat, save that its fur was dark purple and it was a good deal more slender. A single eye stared out above a feline snout. The demon’s mouth suddenly yawned open, revealing serrated teeth that were surely too long to fit inside its maw. Blink demons were even less a part of the world than others of their kind, and they ignored the natural laws that bound man and beast alike.

  The demon’s tongue slowly unrolled from its mouth, the sides as sharp as a steel blade, capable of sawing through bone and sinew. Bloody drool dripped from its fangs.

  ‘Moshka, now!’ Kayne roared. In response, the veronyi made a fist.

  The earth rose beneath the demon in an explosion of dirt. Giant fingers of mud and stone closed around the fiend, holding it tight. Demons could shrug off steel and in most cases magic with little effort, but the wise men of the high places, the druids or witch doctors or whatever name a man chose to call them, they relied not on magic but on the spirits of land and sky and sea to do their bidding. Moshka would pay a price later for their help, but for now the demon was trapped.