Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North (25 page)

‘The King cavorts with demons!
Demons
, Rana – the threat our menfolk have for centuries died keeping us safe from. And now they are here, outside our very walls.’

Rana looked troubled. ‘The Lowlands are vast. Vast, and filled with fools who have grown soft and lazy. Let them suffer as we have suffered. We are blessed – our men peerless in battle, our women wise and strong in the gift of magic. We will find our true place in the world. A place we
deserve
. The demons are a means to an end. The King himself says so.’

Yllandris listened in silence. A few months ago Rana’s arguments would have made a kind of sense. She had been willing to do anything in order to get what she felt was owed her. Manipulate anyone. Betray anyone.

Now she said, ‘The King sacrifices children to the Herald.’

Rana flinched at that and said nothing more.

Beyond the gallows, they passed a crater in the ground the size of a tavern, left behind after the Shaman’s titanic struggle with the Herald had flattened a dozen buildings. The Magelord and the huge winged demon had clashed in the skies just outside the city, plummeting to earth in a maelstrom of raking claws and knotted muscle, the Shaman a blur of bronze beneath the gigantic midnight bulk of the Herald. At first it seemed the Shaman might be the stronger of the two, flinging the demon around like a man might toss a blanket. But then he had begun to falter. The demon’s talons left terrible furrows in his flesh, bloody wounds that would have killed a mortal. It had taken a last-minute charge by the Brethren to drag the Shaman away to safety. Many Transcended had died in the retreat, torn apart by the winged terror as they guarded their master with their lives.

If Krazka’s flurry of executions after snatching power quieted talk of resistance, the Herald’s ruthless display of efficacy had silenced it completely.

Shranree was waiting for them at the north gate. Half the great King’s circle was already there with her. She looked mildly disappointed when Yllandris joined them, but she recovered quickly.

‘For once you are on time. Could it be the recent lesson I delivered has finally sunk in? I pray it is so.’ Shranree’s voice was sickly sweet, as false as a whore’s affections. ‘Take up your position. Now we wait.’

Yllandris curtsied and did her best to appear deferential.
Give her no reason no doubt you. Act like a chastened child. She is too arrogant to suspect anything.
Her hand trembled suddenly and she willed herself to be calm. Fear was only uncertainty about the unknown, after all. There was no uncertainty about one very particular aspect of her plan.

Whatever happened during the next few hours, she would not live to see tomorrow.

It was midday when the Shaman finally arrived at the gates. The Brethren led the vanguard of his great army, a chaotic menagerie of beasts undyingly loyal to their master. Natural enemies ambled side by side: monstrous bears shoulder to shoulder with lean grey wolves, mountain cats padding alongside great white elk to form deadly ranks of antler and tooth and claw. Despite their savage appearance, the Brethren moved with a purpose and unity that set them apart from natural beasts.

Once the Brethren had been men gifted with the spark of magic. At some point in their lives a yearning had arisen in them to transcend, to become one with a host animal. After they had found a suitable candidate they underwent the Shaman’s ritual and merged their mind with the body of their host. Many of the Brethren served to help defend the Borderland. While few in number, they were immune to demon fear. Without their support the army laying siege to the King’s Reaching for the last month would never have made it to Heartstone’s walls.

Behind the Brethren came Carn Bloodfist’s host. The Bloodfist’s army numbered over ten thousand – twice what Heartstone had mustered. Soon the army of the Black Reaching would arrive to bolster the Shaman’s forces further. Mace’s change of heart was a significant blow to Krazka’s plans. It remained to be seen how the Butcher King would deal with that setback. For now, he had more immediate concerns. The warriors of the West Reaching eventually halted a safe distance away, marshalling outside the range of the King’s circle and whatever magic they might try to bring to bear.

Another great horn blast split the air to mark the arrival of Krazka and his entourage. They approached up the wide dirt avenue that led from the centre of town, and the massed ranks of Heartstone’s defenders parted for them. The King strode along confidently, his white cloak billowing behind him.

The Butcher King reached the north gate and gestured to one of the Six – the big brute with the ridiculous bear skull atop his head. Despite his size Yllandris did not judge him the most frightening of the men that guarded the King. Sir Meredith, the ironclad warrior: he made her skin crawl. The lean warrior with the bow looked as though he would peel a man alive for the sport of it. As for the strange Northman with the bloodshot eyes, Wulgreth, there was something not quite right about that one. Yorn looked distinctly out of place among such company.

‘Open the gate,’ Krazka commanded. The huge bear-skulled warrior moved to obey, single-handedly lifting the beam that sealed the gates and dropping it to the hard earth with a loud thud. An eagle soared overhead, emboldened by the absence of the Herald. No chance it was mere coincidence; it must have been one of the Brethren, or else a spirit animal spying for the Shaman’s forces. Krazka could have ordered his sorceresses to blast it out of sight, but instead he made an elaborate show of tidying his cloak and adjusting his sword belt. With a nod to his Kingsmen, who fell in behind him, Krazka pushed open the gate and strolled out to meet the opposing army.

Yllandris’s heart hammered in her chest. She hadn’t been privy to the exact details of Krazka’s plan. She doubted any of the sorceresses had, even Shranree. All she knew was that when the King went out to challenge the Shaman, she and her sisters would follow. Then they would wait, and would do nothing. Not until the signal.

The Brethren snarled and stamped as Krazka approached, but they did not attack. The King halted a stone’s throw from the bestial horde and raised a gloved hand. ‘I would speak with the Shaman,’ he thundered. ‘Let’s see if old potato face is brave enough to settle this man to man. Just him and me. No one else needs to die.’

Yllandris was impressed despite herself. Much as she hated the child-sacrificing maniac, she was forced to admit that Krazka possessed balls of steel.

There was a brief moment of chaos among the Brethren. A moment later they parted and out stormed the Magelord, a study in wrathful fury made flesh.

Even with the ugly scars still raw on his skin – the legacy of his battle with the Herald – the Shaman cut an imposing figure. As always he was naked from the waist up, corded muscles bulging from every inch of his prodigious torso. Glacial blue eyes full of cold fury stared out from the Magelord’s blunt face.

‘Charlatan,’ he boomed, his voice like a great iceberg shifting in the Frozen Sea beyond the Blue Reaching. ‘You dare take the place of the rightful king! You dare bargain with demons, allowing them to pass unhindered into my domain! You dare defy
me
!’

‘Charlatan?’ Krazka spat. ‘That’s rich coming from you. The Herald told me some things, see. You ain’t one of us. You never were. You came here from the Lowlands, fleeing like a wounded dog after your woman was burned alive. You stole magic from the heavens and used it to make yourself a god. Well, you ain’t no god.’

The Shaman bared his teeth. ‘I make no claim to godhood. But the strong rule the weak. That is how it has always been. I keep this land safe from what lies below the Spine.’

‘What lies below the Spine is
opportunity
. You’d have us sit here in this little corner of the north, worshipping your sweaty arse while the winters get harsher and food grows scarce. That’s what Beregund was about, wasn’t it? I killed for you there, and in the North Reaching. They broke the Treaty, so you had them razed them to the ground. I got no problem with that.’

Krazka took a single step forward and in one lightning movement drew his abyssium sword. The grey metal seemed to
throb
, as though it hungered to taste the flesh of the immortal. ‘What I got a problem with are hypocrites. You’re too much of a coward to risk war with your peers in the Lowlands, that’s the truth. Aye, you might be a wolf compared to men who ain’t tasted the bounty of the gods. But the weakest of wolves, they’re still the runts of the pack.’

The Shaman clenched his great fists, and his voice thundered with terrible rage. ‘Enough talk, worm! I accept your challenge. Samaya, reveal yourself.’

The air stirred near the Magelord. One by one the sorceresses that had been lurking behind the Shaman under a spell of invisibility melted into view. Yllandris gasped softly, glanced at Shranree and saw her twitch in surprise.

The leader of the West Reaching circle, Samaya, was as willowy as Shranree was rotund. ‘I await your command,’ she said demurely, though her eyes revealed her discomfort at this turn of events, as if carefully laid plans had been unexpectedly altered.

‘Allow none to interfere in this duel,’ the Shaman’s voice boomed. ‘We fight according to the Code. Let the winner take what they will. The loser will receive only death.’

The two sets of sorceresses formed a ring around the Magelord and the King, each woman facing her counterpart across the circle. The Brethren waited a hundred yards back, the army of the West Reaching a half-mile beyond that. Yllandris glanced behind her and saw the town’s defenders massed just inside the walls. There was no appetite for battle on the faces of the town’s veterans, nor the reinforcements from the Lake Reaching.

Yllandris could feel her heart thumping in her chest. Her sisters seemed just as nervous. Rana had gone an unhealthy shade of white; Esther had chewed her nails to the quick; even Shranree wore a fresh sheen of sweat on her face.

The Six seemed much more relaxed. They stood just outside the circle of women, weapons sheathed and hands on their belts. Sir Meredith looked almost scornful, his heavy-lidded eyes filled with contempt, as if the face-off about to take place was a personal affront to his dignity.

Yllandris paid no more notice to the iron man. With a grunt the Shaman launched himself at Krazka, intending to crush the imposter beneath his mighty fists.

The Butcher King danced out of the way at the last instant, leaving the hulking Magelord clutching at thin air.

‘Huh.’ The Shaman braced himself and then suddenly he hurtled up into the sky, plummeting back down a moment later to strike the earth in the exact spot Krazka had been standing but a second before. The King rolled to his feet with the grace of a cat, responded with a dazzling combination of strikes that would surely have overwhelmed all but the very best swordsmen.

The Shaman caught the blade between his palms.

Immediately the scars on the Magelord’s chest began to open up. His muscles visibly sagged and lost their definition, his ageless face began to wrinkle.

With a grunt, the Shaman tugged the sword free of Krazka’s grasp and tossed it aside. ‘Abyssium,’ the Magelord growled. ‘Demonsteel. You think me a fool?’ The weeping scars on his body began to smoke, knitting themselves back together. His face shifted and regained its youthfulness, his torso sculpting itself back into the image of perfection once again.

Krazka scrabbled backwards. ‘Now!’ he roared.

Yllandris felt Shranree’s sudden probing as the leader of the King’s circle reached for the magic of her sisters, demanding they surrender it. The sorceresses did as she commanded, pouring their collective strength into the dumpy little woman with her hands held aloft to the heavens.

Yllandris summoned her own power and felt the familiar tingling thrill of magic as it raced through her veins. She opened herself up to Shranree, surrendered as much of the magic as she dared. But she held something back, a tiny thread she refused to yield.

Shrieking, rapturous with the magical maelstrom raging within her, Shranree finally evoked the great spell she and the King had been planning all along. She pointed a finger at the Magelord. The Shaman jolted and then suddenly froze, paralysed by the enormous energies pouring from the leader of the King’s circle.

By the time the circle’s counterparts from the West Reaching realized something was amiss, the Six were already among them. Swords and axes bit into flesh in great explosive gushes of red spray. The West Reaching sorceresses attempted to unleash their own magic to defend themselves – but they could only stare in horror as their spells fizzled and died, consumed by the abyssium rings the Kingsmen wore beneath their gloves.

The faster among the Brethren were already halfway to the carnage when a dozen blink demons suddenly manifested right in their path. The fiends had been hiding in the tunnels Krazka had ordered excavated just north of town. The ten feet of earth that separated their ambush spot from the surface was no obstacle to them, no barrier to beings for whom the laws of the world were as mutable as clay.

Krazka retrieved his sword and stalked towards the immobile Magelord. ‘Took me twenty years to get to this point,’ the one-eyed King mused. ‘Not bad for a whore’s get left to die in a cesspool. You got no idea what it takes to climb up out of that pit and reach for the stars. Maybe once upon a time you did. But you forgot.’

Krazka raised his demonsteel blade, lining up the razor edge for a killing blow. ‘There ain’t no rules, see. No Code. There’s only the strength of a man’s desires and the things he’s willing to do to see ’em fulfilled. Me, I want the world… and there’s nothing I won’t do, no man, woman or child I won’t kill, to get it.’

… no man, woman or child I won’t kill, to get it…

Yllandris found her courage at last.

She seized the tiny thread of magic she had kept hidden from Shranree. The woman’s face was rigid in concentration, the vein in her forehead throbbing, sweat pouring down her cheeks. Even with the combined sorcery of the circle, it took every bit of Shranree’s focus to keep the Shaman under her spell. She hadn’t considered the potential for treachery. She was too arrogant to believe anyone would dare.