02 - Wulfrik Read online

  Wulfrik didn’t know how long Zarnath could hold out against the sorcerer and his beast. To try and help the shaman was out of the question. Anyone trying would be incinerated by the wild energies billowing about the Kurgan’s body. Only the lammasu’s strange exhalations allowed its rider to withstand that stream of death.

  Zarnath would fend for himself or he would die. Wulfrik had more important things to do. He gazed across the roadway, watching injured dwarfs hobbling back towards the gates. He saw a few survivors among his own men as well. Tjorvi was dashing among the sprawled bodies of the immortals, thrusting a dagger beneath their bronze beard-sheathes and slitting their throats with sadistic glee. Haukr was sawing rings from the fingers of a dead slaver while Stefnir pursued some of the injured dwarfs, chopping at them with an axe he had lifted from one of the immortals. Njarvord, lost in one of his rages, was beating the crushed skull of a dwarf against the ground, oblivious to the mash of blood and brain it left every time it smacked against the road.

  Wulfrik planted his feet to either side of his sword. Straining every muscle in his body, he wrenched the blade free. “To me, heroes of Norsca!” he bellowed. The few survivors of his warband turned and stared at him. Wulfrik gestured at the ziggurat where the great gates stood open and unguarded.

  “In there we will find our doom,” Wulfrik told his men. “If it is to be our end, then let us make it one that even the gods will envy!”

  His men lifted their voices in a fierce war cry. Mustering their strength, the warriors followed their leader into the yawning mouth of the ziggurat. Only Wulfrik hesitated, casting a last look back at Zarnath and the dwarf sorcerer.

  The shaman knew the secret of the torc. If he abandoned Zarnath, he might never find another man who knew the secret. The Kurgan might be his only hope of breaking the curse.

  Wulfrik snarled and shook his head. The torc was the key to breaking the curse. If he had the shaman and not the relic, then he had nothing. He would gain only a useless death and an eternity of shame if he tried to help Zarnath. All he could do was find Khorakk and take the torc from him. That was the hope he had to cling to now.

  Chapter Eight

  Njarvord bore the fleeing slaver to the floor, the dwarf’s tusks snapping as his jaw cracked against the black stone. The dwarf struggled to push the northman’s heavy bulk off him. Hurling curses on the slaver, the Baersonling grabbed the sides of the dwarf’s head. The powerful warrior pulled the slaver’s head back savagely, snapping his neck like a rotten stick.

  “I thought the idea was to catch one alive and make it show us where the boss dwarf is hiding?” Haukr muttered. His annoyance at Njarvord’s unthinking bloodlust wasn’t quite enough to keep him from going through the slaver’s pockets when the Baersonling stepped away from the corpse.

  Haukr’s bitter words sobered Njarvord. The bearded marauder turned an uneasy eye towards his captain.

  Wulfrik didn’t even glance in Njarvord’s direction. “I already have a trail to follow,” the champion growled. “So long as none of you kill the dwarf I need you can wash this place in their blood for all I care.”

  There was an eerie intensity in Wulfrik’s eyes as he stalked past his men. Some of the Norse tribes spoke of the “weirdsight”, a premonition granted to those who have stared too long into the realm of the gods. Seers and witches were said to possess the ability to see into the future and allow that knowledge to reshape the present. It was a power that had toppled kings from their thrones and brought victory in war. Mighty as they knew Wulfrik to be, endowed with strength and endurance beyond most men, his warriors had never before suspected he might be possessed of the weirdsight.

  The thing which guided Wulfrik was much simpler than the spectral powers of warlocks and sorcerers, though equally intangible. A wounded dwarf, a survivor of Zarnath’s amok magic, had retreated back into the ziggurat. Several had done so, as Njarvord’s last victim could attest, but this particular dwarf had left some of his blood behind him at the gate. Since fleeing, the dwarf had bound his wound, staunching the loss of blood. But he could not eliminate the scent he left behind so easily.

  Like a wolf in the forest, the champion was following that scent now, focussed upon it with such fixation that the rest of the world had faded from his perception into a half-real place of shadows and whispers. Wounded, frightened, with his enemies at his heels, the dwarf would flee to a place of safety. Where would be more logical for him to go than to seek protection from his overlord? Follow the scent and find Khorakk, such was the wisdom Wulfrik had chosen to guide him.

  The halls within the ziggurat were built from heavy basalt blocks, ground and sanded to an almost mirror-like sheen. No torches lit the black passages; instead light came from polished plates of obsidian set into the walls. Like black mirrors, the plates stared from their settings, an infernal crimson glow emanating from their depths.

  Haukr and Tjorvi tried to pry one of the plates free when they had first discovered them, but quickly lost the appetite for such plunder. There were things behind the obsidian mirrors, things trapped inside the dark gleam, things that scratched at the glistening surface. It was the endless hate of the trapped daemons which produced the hellish light within the ziggurat. The two looters didn’t need Stefnir to tell them the dwarfs were mad to create the obsidian mirrors, much less adorn the halls of their citadel with them.

  The architecture itself was built in a ponderous, overwhelming fashion. Perhaps to compensate for their small bodies, the dwarfs had built their temple at titanic scale. The main corridor proved every bit as wide as Wulfrik had judged it to be when the great gates had opened. A fleet of longships might easily have sailed through the ziggurat’s main hall were it somehow flooded. The archways which stretched overhead were like the stone ribs of a vanquished god, their weight pressing down upon the men even when the ceiling climbed from fifty to a hundred feet. The side passages which opened off from the main corridor at regular intervals were big enough to herd oxen down, and each was guarded by a massive door of bronze and iron. The faces of bulls were engraved into each door, the mouth of each face an open cavity through which a dwarf gunner might thrust the deadly barrel of a blunderbuss.

  The northmen braced themselves each time they passed one of the doors, taking shelter behind their shields until they were beyond the menacing portals. Wulfrik snorted in contempt. This Khorakk was both soft and arrogant. He’d sent all of his troops down into the mines to subdue the slaves, keeping only his elite soldiers behind. Then, so sure of the strength of his immortals and the magic of his sorcerer, he’d committed all of his warriors to crushing the invaders at his gate. A Norscan king might do the same, but he would glory in the fight. He would march with his warriors, not dispatch them like thralls upon an errand while remaining behind in his palace.

  Wulfrik would enjoy showing Khorakk the price of his hubris.

  Deeper into the ziggurat the men crept. The trail of the wounded dwarf never wavered, keeping to the main corridor. Soon, the warriors could see an angry, fiery glow at the far end of the hall, a smouldering brilliance more sinister than the crimson light of the daemon-mirrors. A stench of sulphur and boiling pitch slithered through the air, stifling the breath of even the hardy Njarvord. It was like the molten breath of a mountain, a vapour of brooding malignance older than blood or memory.

  The marauders hesitated, feeling the oppressive menace rising the closer they came to that diabolic glow. The tiny voice of their fear whispered to them, warning them to go no farther. Alone, the warriors would have obeyed their fear. But they were not alone. Even as they hesitated, Wulfrik strode onwards. There was no fear in his eyes, only the pitiless determination that had brought all of them so far. It was the fearlessness that had made Wulfrik a hero, a warrior whose sagas were sung across all the freeholds and steadings of Norsca. It was the unfaltering courage that made men risk their lives to sail with him, for the men who followed Wulfrik were lauded as heroes in their own right. By following Wulfrik, these
men laid claim to a glory they would never win by themselves, a glory their ancestors could envy.

  Some things are more powerful than fear. When Wulfrik marched towards the heart of the ziggurat, his men were at his side.

  At the end of the massive hall was a room that could only be described as colossal. Only the craft of a people like the dwarfs could have shaped stone in such a fashion. Immense walls converged upon one another, like a reversed image of the tiered steps of the ziggurat’s exterior. No beams or buttresses supported the mammoth construction; no archways interrupted the staggering vastness from floor to ceiling. Like a hollow hill, the great temple yawned between the basalt walls, a thousand feet across, nearly again the distance between its floor and ceiling.

  Huge columns flanked the hall, forming the backs of gigantic statues which combined the worst aspects of dwarf and bull, gargantuan brethren to the creature Wulfrik had killed at the gates of Dronangkul. The walls were everywhere adorned with obsidian mirrors before which were piled the skulls of goblins and orcs and other creatures, the crimson glow of the plates casting weird shadows upon the crumbling bones.

  The whole scene was lit by volcanic fires, canals of molten rock that flowed across the floor to converge in a great pool of magma at the very centre of the hall. Suspended a few inches above the pool was a huge stone platform upon which stood a giant bronze statue cast in the image of a dwarf-faced bull. The belly of the idol was open and beneath its ribs dangled a nest of steel shackles. Barrel-like machines rested to either side of the idol, squatting like noxious toads in its shadow. Fore and aft, the machines ended in ugly nozzles, each nozzle fitted to a short hose of dragonhide.

  The purpose of the machines was beyond the ability of the northmen to guess, but the function of the crystal lamps sitting at each corner of the platform was obvious to Wulfrik. These were the lights the dwarfs had used to create the ghostly face of their god in the sky above the outpost. A monstrous curling tube of brass gave evidence whence the god’s voice had sounded.

  Directly above the platform, far overhead, the ceiling of the temple was open, the first flicker of day washing out the stars. Immense chains extended from each corner of the platform to connect with enormous gears set into the roof of the ziggurat. Again, it was not hard for Wulfrik to discern their purpose. The platform was the altar of their god. Through their machines, the dwarfs could bring that altar down inside their temple or raise it up to the top of the ziggurat. Why they should do such a thing, whether it was some strange ritual Hashut demanded of the dwarfs, Wulfrik neither knew nor cared.

  As he cast his gaze across the temple, studying its environs, Wulfrik noted the cluster of dwarfs standing upon the platform. Some were the ragged slavers who had survived the battle at the gate, others were bald dwarfs with scarred faces who wore red robes and bronze breastplates. Wulfrik decided they were monks or priests of some sort, servants of the dwarfs’ Father of Darkness. It was the other dwarf upon the platform who interested him.

  Wulfrik decided he had been hasty naming the sorcerer at the gate as the most loathsome dwarf in creation. The specimen upon the platform was hideous enough to sicken a jackal. His head was squashed and flat, his ears large and mismatched. His nose was a bulbous knot of hairy pimples and his eyebrows were thick enough to be braided. His black beard hung from a sharply pointed chin in oily locks, gaudy combs of diamond and ruby strung through them in the most haphazard way. Behind the rings of his beard, Wulfrik could see the blood-red hue of Khorakk’s torc reflecting in the fiery light of the temple.

  The dwarf thegn hadn’t been so idle as Wulfrik had supposed. Instead of the rich robes of a pampered king, Khorakk was encased in a heavy suit of plate armour which drastically increased both his height and his bulk. There was no fright in the thegn’s eyes when he saw Wulfrik enter the temple, not even surprise, only an amused sort of disgust.

  “You led them here,” Khorakk’s slithery voice rasped as he turned towards one of the slavers. Before the slaver could react, Khorakk’s armoured hand reached out and closed about his head. Steam puffed from vents in the armour’s elbow and shoulder as Khorakk crushed the slaver’s head into paste. “How inconvenient,” the thegn said. With a flick of his hand, he sent the slaver’s body pitching into the molten fire beneath the platform.

  The abrupt violence of the slaver’s death was quickly followed by more bloodshed. The bald dwarfs turned on the other slavers, piling on them, dragging them to the floor of the platform. Some of their number seized heavy steel hammers, raising the mattocks and pulverising the faces of the struggling captives.

  “The ugly one is mine,” Wulfrik snarled at his men, baring his fangs. “I suggest you remember that.”

  The northmen raced across the mammoth hall, leaping over the shallow canals of fire. The dwarfs stared back at them, seemingly unconcerned by the nearness of their enemies. Khorakk’s hideous face pulled back in a smug look of arrogant victory. He nodded to one of the bald dwarfs.

  “My immortals will be back soon enough,” Khorakk said. “They will attend to this rabble.”

  At Khorakk’s gesture, the bald dwarf pulled a lever jutting from a box-like contrivance standing at one corner of the platform. In response, the chains began to withdraw, pulling the platform and its occupants towards the roof of the ziggurat.

  Wulfrik glared up at the retreating dwarfs and shook his sword. “Khorakk! Fatherless mongrel of a vulture!” The violence in the champion’s voice sent his words thundering through the cavernous temple. “Your ancestors were oathbreakers and kinslayers! Small surprise their descendant doesn’t have the guts of a jackal, much less a man!”

  Uttered in the harsh tones of the dwarf tongue, Wulfrik’s scathing challenge cut at Khorakk’s pride. The dwarf would have liked to reach the roof of the ziggurat, then have the floor of the temple flooded with magma. He’d risen far by being petty, vicious and above all careful. The human’s words, however, stung him in a way that went beyond reason, touching the primal essence of his being. He did not know about the Gift of Tongues, but he felt its power when he turned towards the bald dwarfs and ordered the platform to descend.

  “Manling,” Khorakk snarled at Wulfrik. “I will feed your spine to Hashut—if I can find it!” The dwarf thegn clenched his fist and a curved blade shot outwards from the heavy vambrace on his arm. He gestured menacingly at the Norscan with the sword-like weapon. “You’ll cry to your gods before I’m done!”

  “I’ll cry now,” Wulfrik called back at him. “I asked my gods to send me a worthy foe, not the village idiot!”

  Khorakk’s face turned red as anger swelled up inside him. For a moment, it seemed the dwarf would hurl himself from the platform, so great was his wrath at Wulfrik’s mocking tone. He was used to respect and fear, demanded it from all who stood in his presence. He would not suffer temerity from this barbarian!

  While the platform was still a few feet from the floor of the temple, Khorakk lunged at Wulfrik. Jets of steam hissed from pistons fastened to the thegn’s armoured legs, the machinery endowing his leap with force far beyond that of mere flesh. The Norscan scrambled as Khorakk’s body came crashing down at him, clearing the dozen yards between himself and his prey in the blink of an eye. The dwarf smashed into the floor with such force that the basalt block cracked beneath the impact. Coiled wires fitted into the steel legs absorbed the shock of his violent descent, allowing Khorakk to recover immediately from his leap. The dwarf’s crooked blade flashed out at Wulfrik, glancing across the champion’s scalp as he ducked beneath the sudden assault.

  The dwarf’s armour made him taller than Wulfrik and about as massive as a troll. When the hero’s sword stabbed at him, Khorakk laughed, the blade scarcely scratching the thick marble breastplate.

  “Where is your bragging now?” Khorakk growled, pursuing his attack on the northman. The steam-powered arms of his armour gave the dwarf incredible speed, his blade slashing at Wulfrik as though it were crafted from lightning. Only the rage-ridden clumsiness of
Khorakk’s attack allowed the hero to defend himself, dodging and weaving his body as the crescent blade sliced at his body.

  In dodging the blade, however, Wulfrik exposed himself to the dwarf’s other hand, the steel gauntlet that had crushed the slaver’s skull. The metal fingers ripped at him, cutting through his armour as though it were Cathayan silk. Shreds of mail dangled from Khorakk’s hand when Wulfrik squirmed out of the dwarf’s tightening grip. Blood rose to fill the deep gouges the thegn’s talons left across the northman’s chest.

  Wulfrik snarled in pain, staggering back as Khorakk flung the tatters of his armour into one of the fiery canals. The dwarf’s legs spewed jets of steam as he pressed his attack and forced the hero to give ground before him. Khorakk glanced about him to ensure himself that he would not be flanked by the barbarian’s comrades.

  The other humans were busy fighting the robed acolytes. Each of the bald dwarfs had seized a heavy hammer and followed their thegn into battle. The northmen were shocked to find that their foes were women. Dwarf mothers too old to produce children, their only purpose now was to defend the temple of their unforgiving god. They wielded their hammers with the maddened zeal of fanatics, the burned stumps of their tongues wriggling in silent cries of hate. Seldom had the veteran marauders ever battled foes who fought with such crazed disregard for their own lives as these viragos.

  Khorakk’s hideous face grinned as he saw the dwarf harridans take down one of the humans, bringing him low with a bone-crushing blow to his leg. The thegn wasn’t overly concerned that two of the acolytes had died on the northman’s blade to get that close to him. To his thinking, the barren viragos were almost as worthless as a hobgoblin in the grand scheme of things.

  The dwarf’s momentary distraction as he watched Stefnir fall before the acolytes gave Wulfrik the opportunity he had been watching for. Clenching his fangs, Wulfrik suddenly sprang at the gloating thegn. His blade scraped across the steel gorget the dwarf wore, failing to find the weak join between neck and breastplate. As his sword turned, Wulfrik twisted his hand, slamming the crosspiece into Khorakk’s face. The dwarf howled in pain as his ugly visage was smashed into bruised wreckage.