02 - Wulfrik Read online

  Wulfrik was thrown from his feet as something slammed into him from the side. Air rushed from his lungs as he crashed against the stone steps leading up into the gatehouse, sparks flaring before his eyes as his head cracked against the hard basalt. He could feel the earth quiver as whatever had struck him came charging after him. The champion recovered his wits as a wickedly sharp axe came flashing down towards his face.

  The northman kicked up with his legs, locking his boots about the descending blade, arresting its downward sweep. Powerful even by the standards of the Norscans, Wulfrik felt his entire body shudder at the effort of holding back the axe. He ground his fangs together, bracing his back against the steps as he threw his entire body into the effort.

  “I’ll make your skull a chamber pot for Thegn Khorakk!” a gruff voice snarled in the debased Khazalid of the fire dwarfs.

  Wulfrik felt the axe start to move, forcing his legs to bend. Slowly, inexorably, his foe was proving the stronger. In a matter of seconds, the axe would come slashing down and split his head in two.

  Growling like his namesake, Wulfrik twisted his legs, trying to wrench the axe from his enemy’s hand. His foe laughed at the feeble effort. Certain his enemy was concentrated fully upon driving the axe through his face, Wulfrik released his hold.

  The axe came chopping down, but before it could strike, Wulfrik’s own sword was flashing across one of the hands behind the axe. Fingers flew in the wake of Wulfrik’s blade, dwarf blood fountaining from the mangled hand. Gripped only in one hand now, the axe’s momentum was diverted. Instead of cleaving through the northman’s head, the blade scraped against the step six inches next to him.

  Wulfrik sprang at his stricken foe, lashing out at him with the swords gripped in either hand. The crippled enemy retreated before the fury of the champion’s attack. Wulfrik saw now that his adversary wasn’t a dwarf at all, at least not completely a dwarf. From the waist upwards, he resembled the guards he had butchered on entering Dronangkul, even sharing the same scale armour and thick black beard curled into long coils. From the waist down, however, the creature was more like a bull, standing upon four muscular legs that each ended in an iron-shod hoof. The courtyard beyond the gate was filled with more of the dwarfs, many of them already locked in combat with Wulfrik’s men, but this creature was the only one of his kind the hero could see.

  The champion took a step away from the centaur and laughed. “Was it your father or your mother who was a drunk?” he mocked in the beast’s own debased Khazalid.

  The centaur blinked in surprise to hear his language spoken by a human. Then the nature of what Wulfrik had said contorted the creature’s face into a mask of pure rage. “Barbarian pig! I’ll braid my beard with your entrails! I am blessed by the Father of Darkness!”

  “Then it was your mother who couldn’t hold her ale.”

  Fury overwhelmed the bull centaur. He forgot the axe in his hand, forgot the warriors he had brought with him from the ziggurat to protect the gate. The centaur’s nostrils flared, his hooves stamped the ground. Like a blood-mad bull, he threw himself at the jeering man who had dared to insult both his ancestry and his god.

  Wulfrik dived from the path of the charging centaur. The champion’s laugh stabbed into the monster more keenly than any blade. Shaking his head in rage, the centaur turned around and made a second charge.

  The northman was ready for the centaur this time, however. His dive from the onrushing brute became a sideways roll along the centaur’s path. Wulfrik’s swords slashed into the monster’s legs, hewing through muscle and tendon. The centaur crashed onto his side, sliding across the ground, bowling over dwarfs and Norscans before skidding to a stop against the ruined wall.

  Wulfrik rushed after the crippled monster, caving in the face of a dwarf who got in his way, disembowelling another who thought to stop him with a fang-edged axe. The champion reached the centaur as he was struggling to stand, trying to use the wall to support his ruined body. Wulfrik brought the edge of his sword biting through the centaur’s arm, shearing it off at the elbow. The monster shrieked in pain and crumpled to the ground.

  A loud explosion made Wulfrik spring away from the dying centaur. The champion spun about, swords at the ready. He smiled grimly when he saw Sigvatr standing over the corpse of a dwarf, a smoking blunderbuss lying beneath the guard.

  “I wanted to keep the fight fair,” Sigvatr said, nodding towards the bull centaur.

  “Then you should have let that backshooter bring a few of his friends to help,” Wulfrik growled. He glanced across the courtyard. Several of his warriors were down; whether they were dead or wounded he didn’t much care. The dwarfs themselves were in full retreat.

  The reason for their flight revealed itself quickly. From the towers on the causeway, lights were turned upon the courtyard. Immediately, there was a frantic burst of activity on the tower roofs. Dwarfs scrambled around a pair of artillery pieces. At first Wulfrik thought they might be like the cannons used by dwarfs in other lands. However, there was something incredibly sinister about these machines. They seemed to glow with some infernal power of their own, thick iron chains lashing them to great turnstiles sunk into the towers. He recalled Stefnir’s claims that the fire dwarfs had a way to bind daemons into metal.

  The dwarfs on the towers removed heavy tubular devices from racks and stuffed them down the yawning mouths of their artillery. Shielding their eyes by lowering the visors of their helms, the dwarfs touched flame to their weapons. A burst of blazing light, a snarl like the belly-growl of a bear, and the weird cylinders flew from the artillery. They streaked towards the courtyard, sparks streaming from their hollow ends. One of the rockets smashed into the outer wall of the stronghold, punching almost clean through before becoming stuck. It sizzled there for a moment, then exploded in a burst of fire and poisonous gas.

  The second rocket smashed down into the courtyard itself, glancing off the basalt flagstones and spinning crazily about. Northmen fled before the runaway missile, leaping up stairs and clinging to walls to avoid its crazed movement. At last, the sparks leaping from the rocket’s end sputtered out and it became still.

  Wulfrik glared at the weird weapon, then at the towers above the causeway. He could see the dwarfs feeding more of the strange rockets into their artillery. “Kurgan!” Wulfrik shouted. He raged across the courtyard, looking for the shaman. He smiled grimly when he saw Tjorvi leading Zarnath through the shattered gates.

  “I need your magic again!” Wulfrik snarled at the shaman. He pointed his bloody sword at the distant towers. “Stop them before they shoot at us again.”

  Zarnath leaned weakly against his jewelled staff. “Breaching the gates has sapped my powers. I must rest.”

  “Rest when you’re in hell!” Wulfrik snapped. “Stop those vermin or I’ll cut you down right here!”

  Zarnath’s eyes blazed with blue fire, his face twisting with hate. His expression softened when he felt steel against his ribs.

  “You heard the captain,” Sigvatr hissed in his ear. The old warrior put enough pressure on his blade to break the shaman’s skin. Zarnath shuddered as he felt his own blood trickling down his side. Reluctantly, he bowed his head.

  Throwing wide his arms, Zarnath raised his staff. Arcane words even Wulfrik could not decipher rasped across the shaman’s lips. The fire in his eyes slowly faded, gathering instead within the gemstone at the head of his staff.

  Streams of lightning crackled from the head of the staff, sizzling into the rack of rockets upon the roof of the left tower. Several of the dwarfs were caught in the lightning storm, screaming in terror as their bodies were scorched by the electricity. Others, seeing the target of the malevolent magic, flung themselves from the turret, more willing to risk the fall to the causeway far below than remain upon the roof.

  Zarnath’s spell did its work quickly. The entire roof of the turret vanished in a pillar of fire and poisonous gas as the violence of the lightning caused the battery of rockets to explode. The dwarfs in
the other tower abandoned their posts, scrambling with indecent haste down the trapdoor leading into the structure’s interior. The northmen laughed at the frantic terror of the dwarfs.

  “Sigvatr!” Wulfrik barked. “Take half the men and secure the lower gate! Keep the dwarfs penned up down below as long as you can. If you strike out now while they’re hiding from the Kurgan’s sorcery, you may have a chance!”

  The old warrior shook his head. “My place is with you,” he told Wulfrik.

  “Your place is where I damn well tell you it is!” Wulfrik yelled. “Get your arse down there and hold the gate!”

  Sigvatr held his ground, staring into his friend’s eyes. At last he relented, calling out the names of the warriors he would take with him. The last man he called was the shaman. Wulfrik shook his head.

  “I want the Kurgan with me,” he told Sigvatr. “I might need him if I have to knock down any more doors.”

  Sigvatr scowled at Zarnath. “Just don’t take your eyes off him,” he advised.

  Wulfrik turned a fanged grin on the shaman. “I don’t intend to,” he warned Zarnath.

  Seeing further argument would get him nowhere, Sigvatr and his warriors dashed down the broad road leading to the lower gate. There was no telling how quickly the dwarfs would rally from the violent destruction of the rocket battery. The northmen knew better than to squander the opportunity their confusion presented.

  “To the ziggurat!” Wulfrik called to his men. He cast a last glance at Sigvatr leading the warriors in the other direction. If things went wrong, at least there was a chance his old friend would be able to get out and make his way back to the Seafang.

  Wulfrik turned away and led the way down the road to the ziggurat. He didn’t see Zarnath gazing at the men rushing to the causeway, or the hate in his eyes as he stared at Sigvatr. He didn’t see the small, toad-like creature that dropped from the sleeve of the shaman’s tunic and grovelled at the Kurgan’s feet.

  Zarnath pointed his finger at Sigvatr’s back. “That one,” he hissed.

  The fanged imp muttered a peal of insane gibberish and loped after the old warrior.

  The shaman wiped the slime from his arm where the imp had lain. Quickly he followed after the northmen. It wouldn’t do for one of them to double back looking for him and discover what he had done.

  Besides, Wulfrik might need Zarnath’s magic when he reached the ziggurat, and the last thing the shaman wanted was the champion to fall for want of a few spells.

  Chuckling at his own jest, Zarnath hastened his steps as the sounds of battle reached his ears.

  Chapter Seven

  Wulfrik charged down the wide roadway leading to the base of the ziggurat. His skin crawled as he passed the morbid ranks of statues lining the path, stone effigies of dwarf warriors with axes raised. As he glanced at them, Wulfrik noted that the silent sentinels were not wholly the work of chisel and hammer: real bones were plastered into hollowed sections of the guardians, a skull grinning from beneath the stony helm of each statue. The bones were those of dwarfs, but whether the dawi zharr intended the gruesome display to honour their own dead or defile those of their enemies, he could not say. It was enough for him to be reminded of the black hearts of his foes and the cruelty he could expect from them if he failed.

  The champion half-expected the statues to leap into life as he passed them. Running down the road, he kept glancing back at them, watching them for some sign of motion. He could see his warriors doing the same, clearly victim to the same unsettling premonition of lurking menace. Njarvord succumbed to the sensation, attacking one of the statues with his axe, hacking slivers of rock and bone from one of the sentinels before throwing himself full against it and pitching it to the roadway. The statue cracked as it struck the road, collapsing into a heap of rubble.

  Njarvord’s attack encouraged the other northmen to lash out at the grim statues. Even Wulfrik felt the impulse to fling himself upon the closest of the guardians and smash it into dust. He was raising his sword to chop at stone ankles before he realised what he was doing.

  Angrily, Wulfrik lifted his sword high and shouted at his men. There was some subtle sorcery woven into the statues, some insidious magic that antagonised any who trespassed within their influence. The statues protected the ziggurat by provoking fear in the minds of their enemies. Lesser men would have fled screaming from the stronghold. Norscans were made of sterner stuff. Instead of running, they fought back. But in doing so, they allowed the statues to fulfil their purpose. Attacking unfeeling stone, spending their strength, dulling their blades upon rock and bone, the warriors were weakening themselves. Worse, they were giving the defenders of the ziggurat the time they needed to muster their own troops.

  “The Crow God’s pox on all your manhoods!” Wulfrik cursed his men. “Forget the gargoyles! There are foes of flesh to be slain!”

  The champion’s furious words fell upon deaf ears. Goaded by the baleful emanations of the guardians, his men were enthralled by their own violence. Their attacks became a frenzied assault, axes and swords smashing over and over into each statue as it was cast down from its pedestal. The urge for destruction consumed the northmen as they pulverised the sentinels with mindless abandon.

  If there had been any doubt that some fell magic was sealed within the statues, Wulfrik settled the question when he drove his sword through the first of his warriors he encountered. Pierced through the breast, the Sarl axeman crumpled to his knees, coughing blood into his beard. The man’s eyes didn’t even focus upon the face of his killer. Instead, he crawled back to the statue he had been attacking, pounding his fists against the unyielding stone.

  Wulfrik kicked the dying wretch and glared at the rest of his men. They were oblivious to the killing of their comrade, fixated upon their maddened assault on the statues. This was how the dwarfs protected their temple, with trickery and magic! Wulfrik could well imagine the effect the sinister statues would have upon any orc slaves thinking to storm the ziggurat.

  But slaves did not have magic of their own.

  “Zarnath!” Wulfrik called, storming back along the roadway. He hesitated when he saw a dark figure emerge from one of the alleyways connecting to the road. For a moment, his eyes locked with the murderous black orbs of an armoured dwarf. The dwarf’s beard pulled up in a scowl when he saw that Wulfrik had resisted the magic of the statues. Raising a crooked scimitar, he shouted at the Norscan.

  The dwarf did not get a chance to repeat his cry. Snarling his fury, Wulfrik lunged at the sneaking murderer. Scimitar and sword crashed together in a shriek of bladed steel. The dwarf spat obscenities as the northman forced him back into the alley. He made a great show of giving ground before Wulfrik’s attack.

  Wulfrik didn’t fall for the dwarf’s ruse. He’d been able to understand the little killer’s shout. It had been a call to arms, a warning to other lurkers that they would have to strike the men on the road quickly before any more of them broke free of the spell. He knew that the dwarf had friends close by, probably waiting in the darkness of the alleyway.

  Leaning in close to the dwarf, Wulfrik locked his fingers in the coils of his enemy’s beard. Pulling savagely, he ripped a fistful of beard out by its roots. The dwarf cried out in pain, staggering back in shock, one hand instinctively flying to his injured face. His eyes went wide with horror as he felt the damage he’d suffered.

  “You look better as a beardling,” Wulfrik mocked the dwarf in his own language. The northman gestured at the fuming dwarf with the clump of black hair he held in his fist. “But I wouldn’t wipe a goblin’s arse with this oily trash,” he grinned, tossing the torn beard back into the dwarf’s face.

  It was an inarticulate scream of rage that propelled the dwarf towards Wulfrik. It was an inarticulate groan of agony that ended his charge. Side-stepping the dwarf’s flashing scimitar, Wulfrik brought his sword slashing through the ambusher’s midsection. Designed to withstand the crushing impact of picks, hammers and orcish fists, the dwarf’s scale ar
mour did little to dull the cleaving stroke of the blade. Dark blood streamed from the dwarf’s belly as he pitched face-first onto the ground.

  Wulfrik leapt away from the dead dwarf, retreating from the alleyway where he could now see other soldiers emerging. Turning his head, he could see other dwarfs stalking from the shadows of the buildings, converging upon the road and the ensorcelled men oblivious to the danger.

  “Zarnath!” Wulfrik roared again. He ducked behind one of the statues as a dwarf pointed a blunderbuss in his direction. Whatever magic had gone into its construction, the guardian was solid enough to protect him from the blast of shot. The same could not be said for the warrior who had been dulling the blade of his axe against the unyielding stone. The man was thrown by the impact of the blast, his body ripped apart by the iron shrapnel. For a pathetic moment, the ragged remains tried to rise and assault the statue once more, then the dying man fell and was still.

  Wulfrik sprang from behind the statue, lunging at the dwarf with the blunderbuss before he could reload his weapon. A second dwarf, this one armed with a hooked axe, tried to intercept the enraged champion. For his effort, the soldier was rewarded with a cleft shoulder and a smashed face. The gunner looked up from his arming of the blunderbuss in time to see Wulfrik’s sword chopping down at him. He squealed in terror, then collapsed as his face was split by the descending blade.

  “Zarnath, you Kurgan cur!” Wulfrik howled. “Break the spell on my men! Break it or I’ll strew your guts from here to Araby!”

  He could see the shaman further down the road, standing just beyond the first rank of stone sentinels. There was, about the way the Kurgan’s head whipped from side to side, the air of a cornered animal to Zarnath. Wulfrik could see the indecision on the man’s face as he wrestled with the urge to flee. The Norscan cursed once more the cowardice of all sorcerers. He reached down, ripping the blunderbuss from the dead fingers of the dwarf at his feet. Angrily, he threw the empty weapon at Stefnir, nearly striking the Aesling in the head. The close call was enough to snap him from his attack against one of the statues.