The Buried Dagger - James Swallow Page 22

  ‘What in the name of all that is cold…?’ Another familiar figure came to them through the throng, his broad face switching from a manic grin to a worried frown and then back again. ‘Hunda, did you leave something behind out there?’

  ‘No jokes, Dural,’ Skorvall shot back, cradling his injured arm. ‘I am not in the mood.’

  ‘A kill-beast tried to make a meal of him,’ Mortarion said levelly. ‘I believe he is so unpalatable that it choked to death.’

  ‘Now you mock me too?’ Skorvall’s expression fell.

  ‘Ah, I understand why it died,’ said the new arrival. ‘You have bitter blood, Hunda. I’ve always said so.’

  Mortarion clapped Skorvall on the back. ‘That’s a good name for you. You’ll have to keep it.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Dural Rask – another of the Death Guard cohort – let his grin return. ‘The alliance we secured with the Forge Tyrant tech-nomads is yielding a rich harvest. Their mechsmiths can make you a new hand, better than the old one, you’ll see!’ He turned to look up at Mortarion, and continued. ‘But to the question! Is it true, Reaper? I mean, we saw the fires on the horizon days back but we could not be sure…’

  ‘It is true.’ Mortarion gave a shallow nod. ‘The struggle for the South is over, my friend. The settlements down there are free now. I personally staked out the last of Necare’s cohorts on the bare earth, and let the lamprey worms feast on it.’

  ‘Glorious,’ whispered Rask. ‘And there is word from Sune and Murnau. Their missions in the Western Sink bring similar news.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Mortarion nodded to himself. ‘Good.’

  ‘Good,’ echoed Skorvall, eyeing him. ‘Mark me, but you almost looked as if you might smile just then.’

  Mortarion’s dour expression remained unchanged. ‘Impossible. I hear what the men say. They believe that if the Reaper of Men ever smiles, the sky will crack open and shatter. So you understand my grave responsibility, yes?’ He paused, then glanced at Rask. ‘Have you had contact with Typhon’s forces?’ Months ago, his second-in-command and trusted friend had gone into the foothills to chase down a minor Overlord, but no messengers had returned.

  ‘Our scouts report signs of his army to the east.’ Rask said briskly. ‘But he has made no attempt to signal us.’ Then the warrior changed tack, and his grin grew wider. ‘That’s a matter for another time! With your return, and these victories, this is the tipping point. Today, here and now. The extinction of the Overlords is inevitable!’

  Mortarion scowled. ‘We are not there yet, Dural. There are still more battles to be fought.’ As he said the words, he pushed down the urge to turn and look away to the northern peaks, to where his foster father’s dark citadel still stood, wreathed in the most toxic of mists and heavily protected – such that no Death Guard had ever been able to approach it. ‘And we have lost many along the way,’ he concluded.

  Skorvall gave a low grunt of agreement. ‘Aye. But there are none who would fault the cost, not any more. All those who chose to obey the Overlords rather than join us have seen the folly of their ways.’

  There had been humans – lessers in spirit as well as character – who thought their lives better served under the Overlord yoke. Some were broken souls who could not comprehend of anything else, and their loss was to be expected. But others, the worst of them, were willing slaves happy to trade in the lives of their own kind. The Death Guard gave them no mercy.

  If any were left, Mortarion imagined they had been subsumed into the fleshworks of the Overlords by now, cut into new golem-soldiers for their armies.

  ‘We are stronger than we have ever been,’ Rask was saying. ‘You trained the Death Guard, Reaper! You made us invincible. And in turn, the Death Guard have spread the war-maker skills to every human settlement. We are all fighters now. Every town is a fortress. Every harvester a soldier!’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Skorvall, throwing a glance at the water canteen Mortarion still held. ‘Provided you have something stronger, of course.’

  Rask let out a bark of laughter and beckoned them towards a barracks-house. ‘Come with me, I have just the thing.’

  He led them to a room at the rear of the low, thatch-roofed building and as they entered, the smells of fermented sugars and heavy yeast assailed Mortarion’s sharp senses. ‘What have we here?’

  Rask walked over to a complex mechanism of rattling pipes, open flames and bubbling flasks. ‘The thing that most know about the Forge Tyrants is how good they are at making weapons. But they have another skill, one less obvious.’ He turned a spigot on the contraption and it emitted a measure of smoky fluid into a metal cup, which he handed to Mortarion. ‘They brew spirits like you won’t believe.’ He filled more cups, one for himself and one for Skorvall, then raised his in salute. ‘A tribute,’ said the Death Guard. ‘To this victory and the next.’

  Mortarion took down the drink and frowned at the taste. Skorvall and Rask seemed to savour theirs, but to his strengthened constitution it seemed like weak tisane. At length, he shook his head. ‘You give me mother’s milk, Dural? It has less kick than the water I drank a moment ago. Is this a libation suitable for our best warriors?’

  ‘I thought it was smooth,’ began Skorvall, but Mortarion waved him to silence.

  ‘No,’ said the Reaper of Men. He ran his long-fingered hands over the mechanical distilling rig, back along its length until he found a copper tank filled with unfiltered, still-raw fluids. ‘This would be better.’ Mortarion refilled the cups with that more powerful essence and made his own salute. ‘Now we drink.’

  Rask eyed the murky contents of his drinking vessel. ‘Reaper… This is half-toxic! A man might be killed by a draught of it!’

  ‘If we are not strong, we will not win,’ intoned Mortarion. ‘If we cannot defy poison and darkness and pain, we cannot stand against death.’ He stared into the depths of his own cup. ‘My bastard of a foster father taught me one valuable lesson that I have never forgotten, and it is this – everything is a test. Life is a challenge that must be endured. Those who are not testing themselves every day are those who are already dying. So drink.’

  ‘Against death,’ said Skorvall, after a moment, and drank deep.

  ‘Against death,’ repeated Rask, taking a breath before he did the same.

  Mortarion joined them, and he revelled in the rolling, fiery sting of the raw fluid as it coursed down his throat and spread across his chest. It made him feel alive, invigorated, as only battle could.

  Skorvall and Rask both gasped in pain and took on hard colour as they struggled to follow his example. The bigger man crushed his cup in a moment of shock, while his comrade stood stock-still.

  Finally, Rask let out a crack-throated howl of effort. ‘Blood and fire, I felt that!’ He wiped a film of sweat from his brow. ‘Another measure and I’d welcome a golem’s knife in my belly…’

  ‘Then it served its purpose,’ said Mortarion, the crooked twist of an almost-smile on his lips. ‘I promise you we’ll share the cups again when the war is over.’

  ‘Aye!’ Skorvall barked. ‘We will drink from Necare’s skull!’ The hulking warrior let out a thunderous gale of laughter, but the sound was blotted out by something else – the keening wail of a war-siren.

  ‘Attackers!’ spat Rask, wrenching a roto-barrel pistol from his belt holster. ‘Who dares strike here? They’ve picked the worst day for it!’

  Mortarion threw his empty cup aside and stormed back out into the daylight, just as the heavy thrumming of rotor blades filled the air, dragging behind a great black shadow that carved across the feeble glow of the sun.

  His scythe was already in his hands as he glared up at the airship, a twin to the one that Kwell’s warband had turned into fire at the climax of the Battle of the Thorn Garden. Gunners on the battlements were frantically cranking their weapons up and around to target the low-flying craft, wh
ich had emerged from the cloudy sky with little warning.

  Fast-ropes fell from the black windows of open hatches along the bottom of the craft, and Mortarion tensed for the fight to come. The energy of pre-battle crackled through his nerves, and whatever fatigue he had felt from the long march back to Safehold was gone in the blink of an eye.

  But then figures were swarming down the ropes, figures in battered grey armour of familiar shape, and the fight he had half hoped for melted away. Death Guard warriors landed all around the square before the barracks-houses, each of them unhooking and giving Mortarion the salute of a mailed fist against their chest.

  ‘Look-see,’ said Rask, his momentum fading as he pointed towards the flank of the airship. Daubed on the side of the craft was the mark of Skull and Sun, covering the Overlord runes that had previously identified its owner. ‘Ah. The cloud breaks.’

  The last armoured man to descend wore a battered helmet that sported a single horn protruding from the brow, and equine-hair pennants hanging from his shoulder pauldrons. Detaching from the rope, Typhon twisted off his helm and his bearded face split in a savage smile as he laid eyes on Mortarion.

  ‘I knew it would be you,’ he said. ‘When my long-sights spied the column returning to Safehold, I knew you were back.’

  ‘You always do like to make an entrance,’ Skorvall said coldly, making no attempt to hide his scorn. ‘Count yourself lucky you were not burned out of the air!’

  Typhon’s smile turned crooked and wry. ‘You don’t like my prize?’ He waved in the direction of the airship. ‘I packed it with every barrel of food, medicine and pure water I could loot from Volcral’s storehouses. I’m sure it can be put to good use here.’

  ‘We don’t need the Overlords to feed us any more,’ hissed Skorvall, but Mortarion cut him off before he could go on.

  ‘The people will take any bounty they can get,’ he said firmly, shifting his scythe to plant it in the dirt. Mortarion’s gaze raked over his second-in-command. No longer the skinny, waspish youth he had fought beside in the mists of the mountain pass, Typhon had grown into the cunning warrior he was always destined to be. He had proven himself a dozen times over during the first years of the war, enough that Mortarion had granted him his own cadre of Death Guard to lead.

  ‘It is good to see you, brother.’ Typhon came forward and clasped Mortarion’s wrist in the old manner of greeting, their vambraces clanking together.

  ‘It is,’ Mortarion agreed, and found that he meant it.

  Some – Hunda Skorvall among them – had never taken to Typhon, even with all his victories and wounds suffered in the name of the cause. Both Calas and Mortarion were outsiders, different from their Barbarun brothers in arms in measures of physical form and origins, but while Mortarion’s towering stature and lean aspect had come to be accepted as part of who he was, Typhon’s whipcord nature had never truly been acknowledged by his peers. The true stories of Mortarion’s origin were known to very few, and spoken of in half-myth by others. Typhon, on the other hand, was visibly a half-breed, and despite Mortarion’s best efforts, his comrade still suffered from that prejudice.

  In the beginning, it had been the two of them who first rallied the lessers to fight for their future, it had been their shared example that gave the people of Barbarus the impetus to take up arms against the Overlords. But those days seemed long ago now, and the ease Mortarion felt at seeing his old friend again was darkened by a faint aura of doubt. Had something changed between them while they had been apart, fighting their separate battles?

  No. He refused to consider that, and crushed the misgiving before it could fully form.

  ‘You have defeated the Overlord Volcral’s forces, then?’ said Rask.

  ‘More than defeated, Dural,’ Typhon replied. ‘Exterminated. There’s not a black manse that still stands across the foothills, from here to the horizon.’ He glanced at Mortarion. ‘My men destroyed the great bridge across the Stonefall Rift as Volcral desperately tried to summon support from Necare. It didn’t come. And you know what that means?’

  Mortarion considered that fact. ‘It means that the High Overlord abandoned one of his closest allies to be put to the sword. He chooses to consolidate his own defences rather than come to the aid of another.’

  ‘Aye, that’s my reading of it.’ Typhon glanced up briefly as the airship drifted away, towards the fields where it could make a soft landing. ‘Necare goes to ground where he knows we cannot follow. He’s nothing if not predictable.’

  ‘Coward!’ snarled Skorvall. ‘Hiding behind the tox-clouds and playing with those dark magicks – afraid to show that blighted excuse for a face!’

  Typhon gave a weary nod. ‘True enough. We won, but every battle fought now is of the same stripe. They send the golems and the kill-beasts, and sometimes Necare’s minor cousins will even walk the battlefield themselves. But they never stand and fight. Every time, they try to draw us into the deep mists, to choke us with the poison of the high reaches. For all our victories, we are trapped fighting a defensive conflict.’ He looked back at Mortarion. ‘Now you have liberated the south, we have to consider anew how to reach our final triumph. Or else, we will soon reach a stalemate.’

  ‘I imagine you have a suggestion,’ Mortarion said, without weight.

  ‘I do.’ Typhon’s smile returned. ‘You will not like it.’

  But Mortarion was not about to let him voice it, not yet. He held up a hand to silence Typhon. ‘You are not alone in these thoughts.’ He looked to Rask. ‘Dural. I think it is time.’

  ‘My lord…?’ Rask’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you sure? I mean… There is still so much that needs to be done…’ His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘We are not ready.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ he told the other warrior. Mortarion shot Skorvall a look. ‘Bitterblood, listen to me. Find the healer’s hall and have them assess that wound of yours. We’ll do as Rask said, get you a machine hand that will punch twice as hard. Go!’ Skorvall muttered under his breath, but he saluted the order and wandered away. Mortarion turned back to Rask, seeing the intrigued expression spread over Typhon’s face from the corner of his eye. ‘You’ll take us to the works, Dural. I want to see what you have been making while we were away.’

  Rask glanced at Typhon, then gave a salute of his own. ‘Of course. It’s this way.’

  He walked on, and Typhon fell into step with Mortarion a few paces behind. ‘I suspected you had given some project to our Master of Ordnance before we left Safehold, but at the time I didn’t press you on it,’ began the other Death Guard. ‘Care to illuminate me?’

  ‘I prefer to show rather than tell,’ Mortarion replied, as they made their way towards the black granite tor on the edge of the settlement.

  Typhon smelled sulphur, acid and the hot rusty tang of burning metal. The odours assailed him as they passed through the narrow slot that gave entry to the interior of the tor, and he drank it in. Ashen on his tongue, it tasted like warfare and he enjoyed the memories of battle that it stirred in him.

  So it was said, the Sullen had spent generations carving out the interior of the tor to create a safehold of their own, and there the bandit clan had built a culture that could weather the predations of the Overlords and the brutality of Barbarus’ harsh winters. But their way of life was never going to last: either Necare and his minions would have eventually brought their most powerful magicks to bear on obliterating this stone bastion, or the Sullen would have killed each other through internecine fighting. Fortunate for the bandits then, that fate had brought Mortarion to their gate. He claimed them all by trial of combat and made the Sullen a part of the Death Guard. Their home inside the tor, though… that he had given to someone else.

  Rask led them deeper into the spiralling, high-ceilinged caverns that filled the tor’s interior. Spaces that had once been set aside for Sullen clanner domiciles were now great
workshops, where blacksmiths and metalworkers beat out sheets of salvaged battleplate into new shapes, and built armaments from scraps and ingots of tooled iron.

  The tor belonged to the Forge Tyrants now, and they had made it their own. Here, the weapons of the Death Guard were made – the tools of the war constructed, repaired and improved upon.

  Typhon’s guns and blades were all cut by the tech-nomads, tailored to his reach and his fighting style. It was a benefit of rank and status as one of Mortarion’s elite. But as he walked on after Rask, he saw killing machines of new design and form that drew his attention.

  Mortarion nodded, noticing his interest. ‘The smiths have been hard at work. I granted their artisans first choice of the mineral stocks from the Overlord mines we have captured, and all battlefield salvage rights. It is not just our blades they are keeping sharp, my friend.’

  ‘I see that.’ They passed work benches upon which lay weighty swords bristling with spiked guards, great lightning halberds fitted with electro-chemical batteries, and dragon-guns capable of projecting streams of ignited fuel and virulent acids. Typhon saw multi-barrelled ballistic slug-throwers fed by great ammunition hoppers, and rotary blades heavy with barbed chains and flail attachments. He feigned a look to appear impressed by it all, but inwardly he found little among the work of the Forge Tyrants to affect him.

  Mortarion does so like his tools, Typhon thought to himself, glancing at the war-beaten battle scythe the Death Guard commander carried over his shrouded shoulders. It was his way, Typhon reflected, to reach for something physical with which to oppose the threats around him. Mortarion was not at ease unless there was a weapon within a hand’s reach.

  Does he know that about himself? The question passed through Typhon’s mind, but without an answer it drifted away again.

  There were other kinds of weapons, of course, other kinds of tools. More and more, Typhon had allowed himself to consider these things, to look at factors that others would have decried out of hand. The numinous and the unreal, these things could be turned to the business of making war as easily as blade or bullet, if one only understood how to wield them.