Resurgent Shadows (Successive Harmony Book 1) (27 page)

The Dragonlords were to blame for the current state of the world. They had caused the ultimate entropy and destruction that existed in the world. They shared the blame for the blood on his hands. They were at the heart of Chaos and at the heart of all that was going on in the world. He breathed deeply and coughed up phlegm, which he spat across the room. He scrubbed as his face with the back of his hand but only succeeded in spreading around the dirt and filth that covered it. Rationally he knew that the dreams were only a way for his mind to accept his own guilt without going crazy, but his heart knew they were something more—that they were real.

Nepja knew the Dragonlords were to blame. Nepja knew it and had already enlisted Caleb’s help in his fight against them. The wizard had held up his end of the bargain and Caleb intended to hold up his, but perhaps for different reasons than what Nepja hoped. The Dragonlords had much that they needed to answer for. They did not absolve him of his guilt, but they surely shared it. It all made sense.

A knock sounded at the door and Lando shoved it open after a moment’s pause. He placed a pitcher of cold water on the ground, nodded once and then closed the door behind him. Caleb realized that his face was caked in dust and snot. He didn’t know how Lando had known that he’d need to clean himself, but he really didn’t care. He had no desire to be around anyone else right now, nor did he have the mental strength or energy for the inevitable conversations that would surely come.

He got to his feet anyway and stumbled over to the pitcher. He splashed water onto his hands, cleaned up his face, and scrubbed the dirt from his body. His undershirt was ruined, but he pulled his coat of mail over his bare skin and donned his tattered over-shirt. It wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t unpleasant either. He picked up his quiver, the arrows had already reappeared within it, and slung it over his shoulder. He tried not to think about which arrow it was that he’d used to kill Thomas. He picked up Faeranir and slipped the bow onto his back.

Lando was waiting for him on the other side of the door. Without comment, Caleb followed him to another room and entered.

Eric had awoken with the cleric at his side. “How do you feel?” Torsten had asked.

Almost immediately, Eric had reached out for Valundnir and found it resting beside him. He had immediately felt better. The fatigue and exhaustion had left him.

The squad had been happy to see him up on his feet, even Waelin, and they had packed the camp up quickly and resumed their march before the sun had fully breached the horizon and pierced the gloom with red and orange rays. In truth, Eric was glad to get away from the stench that clung to the air.

Now, an hour later, Eric felt a small flash of irritation at Torsten’s continued questioning. “I’m fine, Torsten,” he said sharply.

Torsten nodded and said nothing further, but a dark look crossed his face for a brief moment.

As they marched, Eric took time to consider the strength of Torsten’s clerical power. It was magic. That much was clear. Between his healing and the shield he had created back with Roberts’s men, Eric had witnessed acts that defied logical understanding. The religious side of him wanted to call them miraculous, but the other side of him, the side that was becoming increasingly frustrated, had his doubts. There had been no miracles from his own God when the earthquakes had come. His God hadn’t granted power to the mothers and fathers who had done everything they could to protect their families from death and destruction when the world had shattered.

Torsten’s God, Atelho, granted him real power. He had seen it, been healed by it. According to Torsten, Valundnir contained that same physical power. A gift from Atelho unto his holy warriors. It was much easier to trust a God whose hand could be seen in the lives of His followers. It was something to think about.

Still, despite his frustrations, Eric’s life had been filled with too many faith-building moments for him to ever fully question his God and beliefs. Faith came before the miracle. Maybe Eric’s God was testing humanity, seeing which of them would remain true despite the hell they’d encountered, like Job from the Bible.

Torsten’s God was a deity of flashy miracles, so maybe faith in him was fleeting, unlike Eric’s faith that was based on endurance through trials. Or so Eric hoped, anyway.

“I’ve got to run on ahead,” Torsten said at length. “Meet up with the army. I have been gone long enough as it is. Hopefully Olan hasn’t done too much damage while I’ve been away.”

Eric shrugged and Torsten turned away to speak with Pedryn. A few minutes later he disappeared through a gap in some of the ruins through which they passed.

Eric pulled out Valundnir and spun the war hammer end over end a couple of times in his hands. Torsten had mentioned that they would meet up with the army later that day. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He was a human amongst dvergers and, according to them, profaning one of their most holy emblems. His would be a constant battle for acceptance. But . . . 

Valundnir spun idly in his hands. The more Eric thought about it, the more he came to realize that he wanted more than acceptance. He wanted to lead them, needed to lead them. With Valundnir at his side, he would win over their devotion and loyalty. If what legend and myth said about dwarves was true, and so far it had proven thus, except for calling themselves dvergers, then the loyalty he won now would remain his forever. He needed to know everything there was to know about the dverger culture and in order to do that, he’d have to get to know his own group of soldiers very well.

Not one given to meaningless preamble, Eric called out to the dverger nearest him, who happened to be the one who had questioned his religious beliefs the day before.

“What’s your name, dverger?”

“My name is Varin, human.”

“Tell me about yourself, Varin. What should I expect tonight when we meet up with the army?”

Varin was quiet for a long moment, but slowed his pace so that he and Eric could walk level with one another.

Eric let the silence hang between them. Either Varin would answer or he wouldn’t. If he didn’t, Eric would ask all the other dvergers one by one until one of them gave him the information he needed.

“Very well, Guerreiro,” Varin replied at length. He slung his buckler across his back and clipped the leather holding strap onto his pack. “I am Varin, son of Orrin of the Deepgarth Clan. We of the Deepgarth were once they who dwelt on the fringes of our underground society and guarded the people from those who sought to destroy us. We are the warriors of the dverger race, along with Clan Norvigr. We are also allied with Midgarth, who provides all our clerics and mushroom farmers. Clan Glitra are our miners and metal smiths. They are neither friends nor enemies with anyone. Gaeslingr and Fenrirbane are the dragon fighters. I wouldn’t want to be one of them, not for all the gold on Atelho’s crown. The other three, Ragnar, Gungnirfast, and Mjolnirfast, have allegiances that shift like shale and limestone.”

“So only Gaeslingr and Fenrirbane fight the dragons?”

“Aye, they are a crazed lot, but they are good at what they do. Not as crazy as when a dverger goes berserk, but still addled in the head.”

“What do the rest of you ‘warriors’ do then?” Eric realized that the questions might be taken badly only after it had come out of his mouth, but it was too late to retract.

“We kill golgent and trulgo! What do you think we’d be doing?” Varin shouted. His thick knuckles popped as they tightened on the haft of his axe. Eric ignored the anger, pointedly swinging Valundnir up onto his shoulder in a graceful arc. He wondered absently why he was being so confrontational, but it was proving to be effective, so he continued.

“How much of a chance is there that someone will try to kill me in my sleep tonight?”

“Who do you think we are, human? We’re not like you! Dvergers are not assassins! If a dverger were to want you dead, he’d fight you face to face, with honor. He’d look you in the eyes as you died and there’d be a weapon in your hands, even in death.”

“And how many dvergers are going to want me dead? You dvergers don’t really have a fondness for humans.”

“Several dvergers will challenge you to Holmganga over the insult of your being adopted into the house of Deepgarth. That alone would be cause to want you dead. The fact that you carry an Elithalma, our holy weapon, will only increase their desire to see you dead.”

“I assume this Holmganga is some dverger test of honor that involves bashing away at something with weapons until someone is arbitrarily declared the winner?” Eric asked sardonically. Suddenly he was tired of constantly having to prove himself. He’d had to fight a battle every day since he’d been forced into the sewers beneath Provo. It was a battle to survive, to assert authority over people so incompetent that they didn’t even recognize their own stupidity. Compared to the struggles he’d had to face every day, a pithy challenge over some perceived slight to dverger honor seemed unimaginably unimportant and paltry.

“The Holmganga is a test of honor and strength,” Varin answered through gritted teeth. “Any dverger can challenge any other. Rules are decided by the challenged.”

Eric let the conversation drop. He’d found out what he needed to know. When stripped down to their barest parts, the dvergers were little more than what the dwarves of myth were purported to be, stoic and stubborn to the core, solving all their problems either through intractable patience or violence. It would be simple for Eric to meet the challenges of Holmganga and come out victorious. But winning a single fight wasn’t enough. He would have to win all the battles that were sure to follow to gain the clout to influence what went on. It would take time that Eric didn’t have. Unlike the dvergers, Eric’s supply of patience was limited.

“Ho, Guerreiro!” one of the dvergers shouted, pulling Eric from his thoughts. “We’re missing one of our number!”

Eric did a quick count of the dvergers and cursed himself for his earlier inattention. They were in a semi-open stretch of road, though there were several abandoned buildings and cars in various states of decay which the dverger could have been investigating.

Eric’s grip tightened on Valundnir. “Keep going,” he ordered, “I’ll find him.”

“Wait,” Varin yelled. “You can’t leave!”

Eric shut out the words and hurried back along the path, his eyes cast downward in search of the dverger’s tracks. It didn’t take long to find where the single set of dverger tracks turned away from the group a few hundred yards back. The tracks were easy to pick out in the dust and ash. The dverger had darted behind an old building and then turned southeast along a parallel track back the way they had come, using the ruins as cover.

“What the devil is he doing?” Eric wondered aloud, shifting his grip on Valundnir so that he could jog.

Even though Eric didn’t know much about this sort of thing, it made no sense for the dverger to be out scouting this far on his own. Eric scanned the buildings around him, but didn’t see anything that would have drawn the dverger away from the group.

Eric sped up. Irritation swelled within him as the minutes dragged by without sign of the missing dverger. The tracks never stopped near any likely hiding places, never even passed behind partially standing buildings or anything else that could have been used as a trap. What was he thinking?

The tracks cut off abruptly at the edge of a shallow depression in the ground. Eric probed the hollow with his foot and found it to be quite solid. It looked like a sinkhole, created by the depletion of water from the aquifer, but was too perfect, too symmetrical, to be chance. The hole was at least six feet wide and perfectly round, as if someone had traced it in the earth.

Valundnir pulsed in his hands and the ground shook. The force of the quakes threw him to the ground. Valundnir tumbled from his shaking hands and the nearby buildings groaned and popped ominously. Dirt and bits of asphalt burst into the air as the depression suddenly heaved and bowed outward like an inflating balloon. The earth erupted in a cascade of dirt, dust, and ash, spewing waves of rock and soil over Eric and covering him up to the waist. Dust billowed into the air and something massive exploded out of the ground.

The brown thing contorted and twisted around in the air a dozen stories about his head. At the apex of its ascent, its thick brown wings unfurled to reveal a monstrous reptilian body, wide stubby head, and burning red eyes. Once open, the dragon’s wings stretched the entire distance between the closest two buildings, blackening out the sky. The taut flesh billowed outward and slowed its descent back to earth. A pair of heavily muscled back legs clasped onto the edges of the pit, holding the dragon suspended above the open chasm. The short neck craned and looked down at Eric. The wide mouth split in a feral grin, revealing foot-long fangs that dripped a putrid black liquid that hissed and popped as it hit the ground.

Eric lay frozen in fear for a moment, a mixture of despair and awe holding him in place, but then he forced himself to act. If he didn’t free himself fast, he was going to die. He struggled against the weight of the rock and earth that imprisoned him. He freed one of his legs, but the dragon flexed its wings and the earth trembled and fell back over him as if propelled by the dragon’s thought.

Eric felt panic claw its way up his throat as he realized that he was completely helpless, imprisoned in dirt from the waist down and staring up at the brown scaly belly of a dragon that had command over the very earth. The panic gave way to the edges of terror. Eric’s survival instincts protested against the depravity of the situation and his anger surged. Energy washed through him. Strength returned and terror bowed before rage.

Valundnir appeared in his grip, crackling with bronze sparks. Instantly Eric’s rage swelled like an ocean wave, propelled forward on the power of an entire ocean’s force. He felt the dirt loosen its grip on his waist as if it too had been thrown back by the awesome surge. With a mighty roar Eric heaved himself out of the dirt and swung the war hammer upward at the belly right above him. It struck the scales with a shower of sparks that danced across the dragon’s armored skin like twinkling stars. One of the scales cracked and a portion fell away, revealing a secondary row of scales beneath the first.

The dragon bellowed with annoyance.

Eric back peddled quickly as a jet of thick black acid shot towards him, missing him by inches. The putrid liquid burned the air and left his eyes watering. His lungs screamed for air and he coughed in an effort to pull in as much breath as he could to ease the burn.

A wing lashed out and cuffed him over the head, sending him flying into the side of a building.

Eric rolled down the side of the wall and tumbled onto the dirt. He leapt to his feet, but stumbled over a metal pipe that jutted out from the side of the building. In the second it took to catch his balance, he recognized it as the remnants of a stairwell. The glimmer of a plan formed in his mind. His rage gave him the courage to try it.

He took a running leap, dropping Valundnir to the ground, and grabbing the metal landing a few feet about his head. He heaved himself upward with a powerful jerk of his shoulders and scrambled onto the platform. A crackling stream of acid hit the wall just where his feet had been. He didn’t look back to see where the dragon was, though from the crunching sounds of brick and metal, he was about to be followed. With a shout, he clambered up the landings, leaping between broken metal railings and pulling himself up portions of the wall where the stairwell had degraded too much to be used.