Carnifex (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 1) (29 page)

He headed along the banks of the canal, past barges moored for the night, making his way to the iron ladders that led to the twenty-first level. Just the thought of going up, of looking for Thumil and the others, of drawing nearer to home, was all it took to bring back the full horror of Lucius’s death. He flinched as he felt for himself the rip of the seethers’ tendrils, the burning of their acid touch. He relived his anguished helplessness as the golem made him watch.
 

His footsteps faltered. He glanced up at the molten walls of the ravine, wondering how the Abyss had come to Arx Gravis. Another step, and he drew up sharp, clutching at the pain in his chest. It felt like his heart had been ripped out.

“Lucius,” he groaned.

Weakness entered his legs, and he dipped down on one knee, bracing his hand on the ground. The axe scraped against stone.

“There will be time to grieve later,” a voice said in his head. A man’s voice, gruff and rumbling. Just how he’d imagine a Dwarf Lord to speak.

“I can’t do this,” Carnifex said to himself. He let go the axe and stood. Only, when he made it to his feet, the axe was still there, snug in his grip.

“You can,” the voice said in his head.

Carnifex tried to pry his fingers off the haft, but they would not obey him.

“You are being poisoned by the very air of this place,” the voice said. “Assailed from every side. I will not abandon you. I am your only protection now.”

“You?” Carnifex said, glaring at the blades. “You can speak?”

“I am the
Pax Nanorum
—the Peace of the Dwarves. More than just an axe. For centuries, I was the heart of your people. Their soul. When I was lost in the bowels of Gehenna, the dwarves were deprived of their best defense against the Demiurgos, and this is the result.”

“In the legends, you went down with Arnoch. You were entombed in the city, beneath the waves.”

Silence.

“Are those stories false? Did you come to Arx Gravis with the Founders?”

Silence.

“Why can’t I put you down?”

“Because we are joined now, you and I.”

“What if I don’t want to be joined?”

The axe sighed inside his mind. “You know this has gone beyond what either of us wants. We are caught in the currents of fate. I did not choose to be forged. You did not choose to be born. But forged and born we were, and all to a pre-determined plan.”

“No,” Carnifex said. “I don’t accept that. There are no plans, and no planners mapping out events in advance. But there are meddlers who want us to see things that way.” Meddlers like Aristodeus, searching for patterns in the past and using them to manipulate outcomes in the future. How much had he known? How much had the philosopher really known?

“So,” the axe said, “you don’t believe in the Demiurgos?”

“Even if I do, he’s not the master of my fate. And neither is any other shogger.”

“Spoken like a king of Arnoch,” the axe said. “There’s hope for you yet. Now, Carnifex Thane, wielder of the Axe of the Dwarf Lords, ask yourself this: are you going to give up under the weight of grief for your brother, or are you going to avenge him?”

“Avenge?”

Two dark shapes stepped out of an alley between warehouses. They were the height of a dwarf, but with skin as rough and black as coal. Veins of lava swirled in patterns upon their chests and arms.

“Yes, avenge,” the axe said. Once more, its haft began to throb, and all doubt, all uncertainty, scattered from Carnifex’s mind.

As the demons swaggered toward him, he strode to meet them.

One growled something. It sounded like words, but Carnifex couldn’t decipher them. The other let out a ululating howl. Froth spewed from its maw, and its eyes became shimmering moonstones. It pounced. Carnifex swung. Its arm fell to the ground, still twitching. Unperturbed, it lashed out with the other, but he cut that off, too. Its jaws jutted forward, teeth gnashing, and its head went toppling after both arms. The body stood there for a second, spouting blood from three stumps, then it dropped.

The other demon turned to run, but Carnifex cut it down from behind.

With the swish of paid-out rope, shadows dropped from the walkway above. One in front, one behind, one to each side. Carnifex whirled to keep them in sight: four of the black-scaled demons he’d seen dead on the floor of the axe’s chamber in Gehenna. But it wasn’t rope he’d heard: it was the strands of spider-web the demons descended on.

They sprang from the ends of their threads and came at him.
 

They were fast—faster than the coal-skinned devils he’d just put down. But the moment he stepped in to meet the demon in front, he knew he was faster. Their movements slowed to torpid. He hit one, danced away, felled another, walked beneath the languid stab of a dagger-length claw, clove through a thorax, then made a beeline for the fourth. The demon threw its arms up, tried to back away. But Carnifex swung and took its head off.

Arrows clacked and clattered from the flagstone floor. He glanced up. There were more of the scaly shoggers along the lip of the walkway. They had crossbows, and they were rapidly reloading. So, they weren’t just mindless beasts, like the loping demons he’d first encountered by the
Sanguis Terrae
. Same as the ones who’d followed him into Gehenna, they possessed the skill and cunning of the Black Cloaks they’d been imitating.

He picked up a severed head and lobbed it at them. It fell short and came back down with a muffled thud. The demons recoiled from the edge of the walkway, and it gave him an idea.

Swiftly cutting the heads from the other three shadow-wings, he tied them by their long hair to his belt. Some animals, he knew, were spooked by the carcasses of their own kind; maybe the same would work for demons. If he warded himself with their severed heads, it might be all the advantage he needed.

The lie was given to that particular hope when another barrage of arrows rained down. This time, their aim was better, but on instinct—or something else—he spun the axe in a dizzying blur, and the arrows ricocheted from its blades.

A whistle peeped from above. Cries went up, and then the blare of a horn. The tramp of dozens of boots rolled across the twenty-first level like a gathering storm.

Carnifex wasn’t intimidated. Not with the
Pax Nanorum
in hand. He ran to a ladder and climbed.
 

High above, a gray-scaled demon leaned out over the drop and began to attack the top of the ladder with a hammer and chisel. It was trying to sheer through the bolts holding it in place.
 

Almost listlessly, Carnifex threw the axe. The demon shrieked as it plummeted below. It hit with a splat. The hammer and chisel flew from its grasp and skittered across the walkway.
 

As the
Pax Nanorum
returned, Carnifex made a fist; refused to catch it. The axe exhilarated him, gave him the will to go on, but the instant it had left his hand, he knew he wanted neither.
 

The black dog mood moved in to claim him, and he welcomed its empty embrace. But then he realized the axe was in his hand as he started to climb once more. He couldn’t recall opening his fingers.

Speartips met him at the top. They poked down at him, tried to drive him off. He threw the axe, and it returned; threw it, and it returned, over and over and over. Demons screamed. Spears clattered below. Blood poured in torrents. And then he was on the walkway amid a pile of the dead.
 

A ragged line of demons faced him down with wavering spears. Wings like a bat’s, only crimson, draped from their backs. Scales of glittering silver covered their torsos. But it was their faces that disturbed him most: beards that were tangles of serpents, flesh that peeled away in rotting strips, and smoldering coals for eyes.

They were taunting him, desecrating the image of his people. They were mockeries of the Ravine Guard.

He advanced.

One of the demons stepped toward him, barked something guttural. It was holding a sword out before it, the blade wavering.

Carnifex took another step.

The demon cried out. This time, it was a word. More than a word: a name. “Carn!”

He faltered. Blinking, he tried to focus on the decomposing face. Was it… It couldn’t be.

“Oh, shog, please,” Carnifex muttered. “Please don’t let it be…” And then he saw that it was.

“Kal?” His voice came out a twisted croak.

“Carn,” the demon said again.

Hearing it say his name was like a punch to the stomach. Carnifex doubled over, spat out bile. They had taken his friend. Kal. Poor Kal. Tainted, like the rest of them.

He came upright, the fierce burn of righteousness searing through his veins. He took one step, then another. He brought the axe up. The demon yelled at him to stop. The axe came down.

Silver blurred in his peripheral vision. There was a terrific clang as the axe struck metal. A shield. Another demon stood between them. A mace swung for him. He swayed back, and it thudded into his guts, chainmail absorbing what was left of the force.

He hacked with the axe, again and again. The shield buckled, but did not give. The demon holding it went down on one knee. The Kal-demon stepped out from behind and thrust with its sword. Carnifex smashed the blade from its grip, but as he went for a decapitating riposte, the shield slammed into him. He stumbled back.
 

—A rush of movement from behind.
 

He turned straight into a bristling wall of spears. He batted one aside, stepped in between two more.

“Duck!” someone yelled from behind him.

He spun—

—Straight into the path of a mace.

Stars exploded in his skull. He spun off his feet and landed on his arse. Spears came in at him. Kal’s voice cried, “No!”

Inky streamers erupted from the axe head. Cries and screams. The spears withdrew. Ribbons of fuligin wrenched Carnifex to his feet. A golden sunburst. Pain fled his skull. His vision snapped back into focus.

And he was in among the spears, chopping and whirling. Demons fell back before him. And then they were running, scattering all over the walkway. He gave chase, slipped in blood. Cursing, he slung the axe, knocked a demon over the side. It fell screaming below, and this time, he opened his hand to receive the returning axe.

He sought out the demon-Kal, and the one with the shield, but they were gone, swept away with the routed tide.

Though he glimpsed more demons on his way to the Aorta, none moved to oppose him. He was too strong for them; that much they had already seen.
 

Level after level he ascended after he reached the steps. On each tier, red-wings watched him but made no move. At the sixteenth, he crossed the walkways to the Sward, and demons trailed him at a distance. Horns blasted and whistles peeped, each met by answering signals from above. They knew he was coming. They were preparing. But it would never be enough.

Wheat from the chaff
, the homunculus had said. With the scales fallen from his eyes, Carnifex would know true dwarves from demons. But maybe he was too late. He’d not seen a single dwarf. Kal had been tainted. What if Cordy and Thumil had gone the same way?

“Do not despair,” the axe said. “Press on, and you will save them. Keep going. You must keep going.”

Despite the axe’s goading, the unnatural energy it fed him, he couldn’t do as it asked. He needed to sit for a while, recollect himself. He needed to think things through. It had all changed so quickly. It was too bleak a nightmare. If he could just make it home, surround himself with old familiar things, maybe the horror would dissolve like mist in the morning. Maybe he’d wake up, and his life would be back to how it had been before he followed Lucius into Gehenna.

Devil dogs growled from the shadows. They were small and sturdy, like the chasm mutts he was familiar with, but their eyes were venomous slits, their barks roars that echoed interminably around the walls of the ravine.

At Krank Scorby’s smallholding, the hogs were red-eyed and ravenous. They watched him hungrily through the fence.

When he reached home, the door was unlocked, as usual. He checked behind, and saw a scatter of red-wings still following at a safe distance, one or two shadow-wings flitting among them.

He went inside and shut the door, and for the first time he could remember, slid the bolt in place.

Droom’s door was closed as he passed it on his way to the kitchen. He’d not had the will to clear his pa’s room out. Now he probably never would. The eerie thing was, it felt like Droom was still in there, tucked up in bed, waiting for suns-rise and his first cup of kaffa.

But it was night outside, and Carnifex left his pa to sleep. He caught the delusion immediately he entered the kitchen, and cursed himself for a shogger. Droom was dead. He’d seen his body burned. Or was he? Was it all part of some grand hoax? Maybe he was indeed snoring in his bed. An even worse thought popped unbidden to mind: He might even be a demon.

Rushing out into the hallway, he opened Droom’s door and poked his head inside. The room was dark, and smelled of must. He directed the axe’s glow toward the bed. It was empty, made up with perfectly squared corners, the way Droom liked it.

Carnifex’s heart lurched, and he slumped back against the door jamb.

He had hoped. Even for an instant, he had hoped.

Closing the door behind him, he went back to the kitchen and set the axe down on the table. This time, it let him.

“Don’t take too long,” it said in his head. “Each minute wasted, they strengthen their position.”

“I’ll take as long as I like,” Carnifex said. “It’s already too late.”
 

What did he have to lose? His life? He’d gladly give it. He blanked out the axe’s protests that there was still time; that Cordy and Thumil might still be saved. The black dog told him otherwise: Everything he was had been taken from him in one fell swoop. Everything he’d known.

Or had he ever known it? Had there ever really been a Droom, a Kal, a Thumil, a Cordy, or had they been demons all along? Was he the only one untainted? Had he always been?