Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North

by Luke Scull

  Fivebellies heaved a big sigh. Then he ambled over to Glaston and drew his scimitar. ‘Seems I have to do everything myself,’ he grumbled. He reached down, jerked Glaston’s head back, and ran the edge of his blade across the man’s throat.

  The blood seemed to pour out endlessly. It sprayed all over the grass, over Fivebellies’ face, even over Glaston’s white stallion, which snorted and danced away, crimson spots flecking its alabaster hide.

  Brick went limp in Kayne’s grasp and began to sob.

  Fivebellies let Glaston’s body fall to the ground. ‘The rest of you drop your weapons. That means you, whatever the hell you are.’

  Grunt bared his tusks and looked like he was about to charge. Kayne caught his gaze, shaking his head desperately. The greenskin hesitated. Eventually he placed his swords on the grass, his amber eyes narrowed in fury. One of the bandits came over to inspect his sack.

  ‘Looks like some kind of giant egg,’ he said, sounding puzzled.

  ‘Just get it secured,’ Fivebellies replied. ‘We’ll see what the Seer makes of it. What you staring at, scarface?’

  Jerek was glaring a hole in the fat bandit.

  ‘Let it go, Wolf,’ Kayne hissed.

  ‘I said, what are you staring at?’ Fivebellies glanced over his shoulder just to be sure there was still an army behind him.

  ‘Fuck if I know,’ Jerek rasped. ‘But if I had to guess, I’d say a bloated sack of shit that’ll be a corpse soon enough.’

  Fivebellies’ face went a bright shade of crimson. ‘Asander said to bring you back alive,’ he snarled. ‘But he didn’t say in what condition.’ He lashed out hard with the pommel of his scimitar.

  Jerek made no effort to block the blow, taking the full force of it right on the chin. A second later he grinned and spat a glob of blood right in the bandit’s face.

  ‘Hard man, are you?’ Fivebellies roared, wiping crimson drool from his face. ‘We’ll see about that. Sawyer, shoot him in the leg. I want to hear him scream.’

  Kayne’s hands twitched. He was a moment away from drawing steel, consequences be damned. Then he looked down and saw Brick silently weeping and the desire to go down fighting drained away. If this turned into a bloodbath, Fivebellies might well decide to add Brick to the pile of corpses. He couldn’t be responsible for that.

  The bandit named Sawyer nocked another arrow. Time seemed to stand still as he pulled back the bowstring. And then released.

  Jerek didn’t even flinch. The Wolf looked down at the arrow sticking out of his leg with an expression that might’ve been carved from granite. He reached down, grabbed the shaft between his fists and then snapped it off, tossing the broken end away as if it were a stone he’d just dislodged from his boot.

  Fivebellies’ mouth opened and closed, his jowls wobbling as he struggled for words. Finally, he turned to the men on the hill behind him. ‘Bind their wrists and ankles,’ he spluttered. ‘Don’t be gentle.’ He turned back to the captives, and though his beady eyes held the kind of dull malice Kayne had seen a hundred times before on a hundred different faces, his next words nonetheless sent a chill through the old warrior’s blood.

  ‘The Bandit King’s gonna have himself a nice big bonfire.’

  Rock Bottom

  Davarus Cole dropped the blue-veined rock into the cart. It landed with a clink that should have been satisfying. It should have been, but it wasn’t. Nothing seemed to matter any more.

  ‘Ghost? You all right?’

  He flinched as if someone had struck him, but it was just Smiler delivering his day’s yield. The man flashed a gap-toothed grin beneath a thick layer of dust and grime.

  ‘Fine,’ Cole answered dully. The sun was already sinking below the horizon; the nights were coming in earlier now. Autumn was on the way.

  ‘You want to go for a drink this evening? You’ve been keeping to yourself an awful lot lately.’

  Cole shook his head.

  Smiler leaned in close. ‘I thought you were going to escape?’ he whispered. ‘You hardly say a word any more. What happened to the man who faced down Corvac? The man who was determined to get home to his girl?’

  ‘He’s gone,’ Cole said quietly.

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘That’s right. There’s nothing left for me now but this place.’ He spread his hands towards the tortured landscape. The Horn rose tall and ominous, looming over fissures in the black earth from which the miners were currently being hauled up by the Mad Dogs.

  Corvac sauntered over, and Cole flinched back. The Mad Dog leader peered into the cart and gave an approving grunt. ‘Not a bad day’s work. You keep this up, I might decide you deserve an allowance again.’

  The overseer suddenly shoved himself up against Cole until they were chest-to-chest. Corvac’s crazy eyes glared up at him, his thin mouth twisting into a sneer. ‘Course, you try to fuck me again and you know what will happen. Don’t you, bitch?’ He slapped the handle of the pick he held in one hand slowly against the palm of the other.

  Cole swallowed. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

  ‘Good. Now get back to town. I don’t want to see your pasty face again until tomorrow. You got me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Corvac reached up and patted Cole’s cheek, then went to join his men. He said something to the other Mad Dogs and pointed at Cole, prompting an eruption of laughter.

  ‘What was that about?’ asked Smiler.

  ‘Nothing.’ Cole turned his back on his friend. Shoulders hunched, he began the long walk back to Newharvest alone.

  The dosshouse was half-deserted when he arrived. He entered the common room and collected his evening meal from the cook, then descended the stairs and stepped quietly through the dormitory, not wanting to draw attention to himself. He found his bed at the end of the hall, sat down and kicked off his boots. He shovelled the warm stew into his mouth, hardly bothering to chew the food – it was too much effort; all he wanted was to collapse into bed. Despite his utter exhaustion, he hadn’t been able to sleep much recently. The nightmares were keeping him awake.

  He was halfway through the bowl when a shadow fell across the bed. He looked up to see Shank staring down at him. He had something shiny in his hand. A knife stolen from the kitchens.

  ‘Give me your food,’ Shank said in a soft voice. He had some peculiar mannerisms and a funny way of walking that could lead men to underestimate him. That was a dangerous mistake – as one of the miners had already discovered.

  Cole shook his head. ‘No, it’s mine.’

  The glow-globe on the ceiling above illuminated Shank in a sinister light. Outside, the great cloud that had begun to gather as Cole walked back to Newharvest decided to shed its weight. The first patters of rain struck the roof.

  ‘Goldie says Corvac made you his bitch.’ Shank tittered and checked behind him, like a naughty child who’d discovered a secret he wasn’t supposed to know. ‘She says he’s going to break you.’

  Cole’s heart sank. ‘Why won’t he leave me alone? I do what he tells me. What more does he want?’

  Shank giggled. ‘Goldie won’t let him forget what you did to her.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘That’s not what she said.’ Shank shook his head, disgust plain on his face. ‘I’m not claiming to be an angel. I’ve murdered men. Skinned them alive, in fact. But I’ve never disrespected a woman like you disrespected Goldie. You don’t treat a lady like that.’

  Cole stared up into Shank’s judgemental glare. After all he had suffered, the things done to him that night outside the tavern, this stone-cold killer was going to admonish him?

  The glow-globe on the ceiling seemed to burn brighter. The beating of the rain on the roof outside turned into a roar. As if oil had been poured on a fire, rage flared inside Cole, sudden and terrible, just as on the night he’d first arrived in Newharvest and discovered someone had soiled his bed. He could feel the intense anger throbbing through his veins and it took all his willpower not to charge Shank t
here and then. ‘You’re an idiot,’ he spat. ‘Leave me alone.’

  Shank kicked the bowl out of Cole’s hands. The contents splattered all over Cole’s face and his miner’s outfit and even the bed. The stew in that bowl had been the only food he would receive until morning. It would have been kinder had Shank simply pissed in his face.

  Overcome with fury, Cole threw himself at Shank, trying to knock the other man to the ground. But the last couple of months had seen his strength waste away, and lost in rage he forgot all the lessons the Darkson had taught him. Shank managed to keep his balance and drove a knee into Cole’s nutsack, stunning him. The wiry knifeman forced him to the floor, twisting the blade to rest it against his neck.

  ‘You stupid shit.’ Shank’s breath was hot and sour. ‘You’re Corvac’s bitch, else I’d murder you like I did that other sod. But I can still have some fun.’ Shank’s arm slid down his body, the knife gleaming in the light of the glow-globe. Their tussle had put some distance between them and the globe overhead, and as they moved away from its baleful light Cole found that his anger was almost instantly replaced by desperate terror.

  ‘No!’ he begged. ‘Please no! I’ll give you my food, all of it, tomorrow and every day until you say otherwise. Don’t hurt me.’ There had been a time when he would never have begged so pathetically, but that part of him had died the night Corvac and his gang had ambushed him outside the tavern.

  Shank smirked and pressed the knife closer. ‘Goldie was right. You really are a tiny dick. At least you won’t miss it much.’

  ‘You stop that!’ The ponderous voice boomed out across the dormitory. Suddenly Ed was there, dragging Shank back, tossing him across the room as if he weighed nothing. The halfwit’s brow was furrowed in anger and he waved an admonishing finger in Shank’s face. ‘You mustn’t hurt my friends.’

  Shank snarled and leaped at Ed, driving his knife into the big halfwit again and again. Ed didn’t react. He just stood there with a confused expression as the steel entered and left him, splashes of blood flicking from the plunging blade. Eventually several men rushed forward to restrain the crazed knifeman, but by then it was too late.

  Ed looked down at the gory mess Shank had made of his chest. ‘Oh,’ he said. Then he collapsed.

  ‘Ghost?’

  He tried to open his eyes. The world was a blur, and he felt so very heavy. He attempted to hack up some saliva to wet his throat, but there was nothing left. His mouth was as dry as old bone.

  ‘Man down,’ shouted another voice from far above. There was a brief pause. ‘It’s Corvac’s bitch.’

  A face materialized a few inches from his nose. The smile on that face triggered a memory, which swirled out of the fog of his befuddled mind.

  A piano.

  The smile reminded him of a piano, black and white keys arranged side by side. Garrett had owned a piano. His mentor had purchased it in Shadowport and transported it across the Broken Sea to his estate in Dorminia. It was the envy of everyone who saw it. Sasha had learned to play a few arrangements, haunting in their beauty. Cole himself had never been able to master the instrument. Sasha had always been smarter than him.

  ‘Ghost!’ repeated the first voice. ‘Stay awake! If you drift off, you might not wake up again.’

  He felt himself being lifted, and then he was floating through the air. What had the piano man called him? Ghost?

  He was a ghost, soaring up on ethereal wings to fly away to a better place. But if he were a ghost, that must mean he was dead. It didn’t seem so bad, he reflected. In fact, it was rather peaceful.

  Thud.

  He struck the ground with a painful jolt. Something was torn from his shoulders, and rough hands prodded him.

  ‘Boy’s all skin and bone. It’s a wonder he lasted as long as he did. You think he’s done?’

  Footsteps approached, crunching over hard stone. ‘He’s done. Throw him in the shambler pit.’

  He knew that voice, and the man it belonged to.

  Corvac.

  Memory flooded back. He’d collapsed in the pit. The pick had slipped from his hands as exhaustion finally got the better of him.

  Corvac’s words twisted around in his brain, unfolding like a sheet of parchment and burning their meaning into his brain like fire.

  Throw him in the shambler pit.

  Overseeing the miners could be dull work, and so the Mad Dogs had created their own perverse form of entertainment. The shambler pit, where dead workers were tossed and left to rot until the Blight brought them back, devoid of everything that had once made them human.

  Cole struggled desperately as he was dragged along the blackened wasteland towards the ditch, but his efforts were feeble. He heard a few muttered protests from the Mad Dogs, the more decent among them voicing their objections to Corvac. Still, none dared step in to stop what was happening.

  They reached the edge of the pit. Corvac placed a booted foot on Cole’s chest and for a moment the Mad Dog leader seemed almost apologetic. ‘This is for disrespecting my woman,’ he said. ‘No one fucks Goldie. Not without paying. She told me to tell you that.’

  And with that, Corvac shoved him over the side of the pit.

  The walls weren’t quite sheer, and Cole bounced off them on the way down to the bottom, breaking at least two ribs. Despite the terrible pain, he lifted his head with a colossal effort and took in his surroundings.

  The pit was about thirty feet across and roughly circular. Near the middle of the pit the bodies of two dead miners sprawled on the ground. As Cole watched in agonized horror, the corpses began to twitch. The heads of the dead miners slowly turned on their rotting necks, rotating around to stare at him with mucus-glazed eyes. In a terrifying succession of moans and cracking limbs, the corpses climbed slowly to their feet.

  When he was younger Cole had imagined that when he eventually died it would be in a blaze of glory. He often daydreamed of his heroic last stand, enemies piling onto him from all sides and bearing him down only for him to rise up again, half a dozen swords sticking out of his body, roaring his defiance.

  He never for a moment imagined he would die starved and broken at the bottom of a pit, chewed apart by slavering corpses.

  The shamblers shuffled closer, rotting flesh sloughing off their bodies, mouths opening and closing shut with a horrific clicking noise.

  Cole tried to block out the world as the Darkson had taught him. To slip away to a place of utter tranquillity. The snap of the shamblers’ jaws made it impossible to focus and lose himself. He opened his mouth to roar his defiance, but all that emerged was a pathetic squawk.

  He closed his eyes again. He was done. I’m sorry, Sasha, he thought. I failed you.

  There was a whisper of movement above him, a slight rustle of air as something passing overhead.

  ‘Caw.’

  He opened his eyes. A crow was fixing him with its beady stare. ‘Cole,’ it said.

  ‘You… I know you. You’re the bird from my dreams.’

  Command them. The voice thundered inside his skull. Command them to halt and they will yield to you.

  ‘How?’ Cole tried to move but it was no good, he had no strength left. ‘How are you talking to me?’

  There is no time to explain. Summon forth the power that is within you, child. Bend them to your will. Do it now.

  And suddenly the crow was gone, beating wings lifting it up out of the pit and into the steel sky.

  The shamblers were almost upon him. The snapping jaws inched down, broken teeth inches from his face, so close now that he could smell the creatures’ breath, a rotten stench that made him gag. What had the crow said? Bend them to your will.

  He summoned all his courage, all his willpower. ‘Stop,’ he rasped.

  And the corpses froze.

  ‘The fuck is this? Come on, you raggedy bastards! Bite his face off!’ Corvac’s frustrated scream bellowed from the edge of the pit.

  Cole stared at the putrid heads just above him. The malevolence in thei
r eyes, the infernal force that animated the corpses, seemed to have faded.

  It was me. I told them to stop… and they obeyed me.

  He laughed suddenly, a manic outpouring of pain and grief and relief. He was still laughing when a maggot wriggled from the eyelid of the nearest shambler and tumbled down into his mouth.

  ‘Back!’ he ordered, choking down bile. The corpses withdrew.

  ‘I don’t believe this… Now even the dead are trying to fuck me!’ Corvac was incandescent with rage. ‘Burn them! Burn those whore-spawned dead fucks!’

  A handful of Mad Dogs clambered down into the pit carrying torches and swords. The shamblers lurched towards them, but they were quickly set aflame as torches were thrust at their feet. Soon they were smouldering on the ground.

  Corvac stormed over to Cole and drew his sword. ‘I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve embarrassed me for the last time, you little prick.’

  ‘Lower your weapon.’

  It was Captain Priam. The Whitecloaks had arrived and were climbing down into the pit, Derkin trailing after them. ‘What did I tell you?’ Priam called sternly to Corvac. ‘We can afford no more losses until the new shipment arrives. This Condemned is still drawing breath.’

  Derkin attempted to descend the pit but slipped halfway down, thudding painfully to the bottom. He climbed to his feet and hobbled over to Cole. ‘Come on. Let’s get you out of here.’

  ‘You went to fetch Priam?’ screamed Corvac. ‘You twisted little shit!’ He looked like he wanted to run the hunchback through – but with the Whitecloaks around, he dared not make a move.

  ‘I couldn’t let you torture him any more,’ Derkin said fiercely. ‘It’s not right.’ The corpse-carver placed a comforting hand on Cole’s brow. ‘You can stay with me until you’ve recovered. Ma will look after you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Cole gasped. A moment later darkness claimed him.

  The Seeding

  ‘Well, what about this one?’

  Ambryl examined the mask with a furrowed brow. ‘This one’ was of reptilian design, with a long snout and oversized teeth painted around the breathing hole.

  ‘Are you high again, sister? I would rather the rat mask we saw in the last shop than this… monstrosity.’