02 - Wulfrik Read online

  The Norscans shifted position so the scouts Wulfrik had appointed could shift to the back of their formation. The two men had barely reached their posts when the wolves started howling again. A tremor ran through the ground as the ambushers charged the northmen.

  Once again, arrows clattered against the heavy shields of the Norscans. This time, however, the missiles flew at them sporadically rather than in a concentrated volley. One of the warriors cried out as an arrow grazed his face, but otherwise the arrows failed to inflict any damage. Wulfrik called out to his men, warning them not to let the random fire distract them.

  His warning had just been given when the first wave of their enemies rushed out of the darkness into the feeble moonlight. Wulfrik considered he had underestimated the size of the wolves when he judged them to be like ponies. The beasts were more on the order of full horses, their shaggy grey pelts clinging to lean, hungry frames. Foam dripped from their fangs, bloodlust blazing in their eyes, as they lunged at the humans. There was the crash of heavy bodies smashing against the shield wall, the growling fury of wild beasts as fangs bit into wood and steel, as claws scrabbled against armour.

  Claws and fangs were not enough to break the Norscans’ defence. Even the impact of the huge wolves was rebuffed by the support of the men behind the front line of warriors, pushing their comrades back when they would have faltered.

  No, claws and fangs were not enough to break the shield wall. But it was not claws and fangs alone that assaulted the men. A motley array of iron cudgels, axes and swords struck at the men while iron-tipped spears stabbed at them from above their shields.

  Upon the backs of each great wolf was a grotesque rider. Wulfrik had underestimated the size of the wolves, now he found he had made the same mistake with their riders. They were the size of a man, though with a lean and snaky sort of build, far larger than the goblins he had thought them to be. There was an undeniable kinship to the small monsters though as these creatures shared the same green, leathery skin as the goblins Wulfrik had faced in the past. He might have taken them for orcs, but for the overall thinness of their limbs and the sharpness of their features.

  Wulfrik brought his sword slashing down at the snarling face of one of the creatures. The blade bit through the leather cap it wore, crunching deep into the skull beneath. The monster’s face pulled into a rictus, exposing the sharp little fangs which filled its oversized mouth. The dying creature slumped against the back of its lupine mount as Wulfrik ripped his sword free. The wolf beneath the greenskin struggled to shrug the creature’s dead weight off its back, snapping at the dangling arms. It was only for an instant that the wolf was distracted, but it was enough for Wulfrik to stab the point of his weapon into the animal’s chest. The wolf yelped, leaping straight up, then crashed onto its side and flopped in the dust.

  Almost immediately another rider rushed in to take the slain greenskin’s place. This time Wulfrik attacked the wolf first, dropping low and slashing at its hind legs as it pounced at the shield wall. His sword chopped clean through the beast’s leg, spilling both it and its rider to the earth. Wulfrik kicked the snapping jaws of the beast, then drove his sword across the neck of the greenskin struggling to climb out from under the wolf.

  Hobgoblins! That was what these greenskins were. Wulfrik realised he had heard of these monsters from Kurgan traders. There were supposed to be a great many of them in the lands surrounding Cathay. Not as large or fierce as orcs, they were supposed to be cunning and sneaky, with a gift for dirty tricks and sneak attacks.

  “Jokull!” Wulfrik roared. “Start loosing arrows to our rear!”

  “But I can’t see anything!” the hunter objected.

  “Just do it!” the champion shouted. He didn’t have time to waste explaining his reasoning. With two dying wolves and two dead hobgoblins at his feet, Wulfrik had drawn the attention of his attackers. Slinking cowards at heart, the hobgoblins made no effort to close with him. They would spur their wolves straight towards him, then loose arrows from their bows. The concentrated fire forced the champion to shelter behind his shield, ducking low as the iron-tipped missiles clattered against it.

  Sharp, inhuman shrieks sounded from the rear of the Norscan column. They were ghastly, grating sounds, but Wulfrik could understand them. A second group of hobgoblins had been sneaking up on them in the darkness, using the charge of the wolf riders as a distraction to cover them. Clearly the chieftain’s plan had been to push the men back into whatever ambush the other group of hobgoblins had prepared. With the Norscans stubbornly holding their ground, however, the greenskins had abandoned their plan. They were too greedy for loot to abandon the attack though, and had left their places of concealment to steal upon the men unobserved. Jokull’s blind shots made them believe they had been seen.

  As Tjorvi had said, stabbing unsuspecting men in the back was appealing to the greenskins. A straight fight wasn’t. Arguing and cursing, the second mob of hobgoblins retreated back into the darkness.

  The cowardice of their comrades at first enraged the wolf riders. They redoubled their attack against the shield wall with such fury that two northmen were dragged down by the wolves and another was cut down by a hobgoblin axe. A horrible moment passed when it looked as though the greenskins might penetrate the wall.

  Shouting a fierce war cry, Njarvord threw himself into the gap, laying about him with his blade. Broendulf rushed to the berserker’s side, guarding him with his shield as the hairy Baersonling hacked down his enemies. The craven hobgoblins, horrified by the bloodthirsty madness of the berserker, quailed before the assault. Savagely they kicked and slapped their bestial steeds, cursing and pleading with them to break off the attack.

  Suddenly the night was banished by a brilliant, flaming light. Wolves yelped in pain and hobgoblins screamed in terror as a ball of glowing blue fire smashed down upon them from the darkened sky. Three wolves fled across the desert, their fur smouldering as they ran. Their burning riders writhed on the ground, wailing in agony.

  Wulfrik risked a glance over his shoulder. The same blue light was blazing at the very centre of the Norscan formation. Zarnath held his jewelled staff high over his head, as though trying to thrust it through the sky. The stone set into its head was glowing with magical energies as the shaman invoked his sorcery. A second blazing ball of light hurtled down from the night sky, smashing into the faltering hobgoblin attack.

  Hurling epithets on the heads of the northmen, the hobgoblins broke away. Their wolves whining in fear, the monsters vanished back into the night as suddenly as they had come. Behind them they left their dead and dying.

  “A fine trick,” Wulfrik told Zarnath as he turned away from the shield wall.

  The shaman slowly lowered his staff. There was sweat dripping from his forehead, blood dripping from his nose, but the Kurgan managed to smile in acknowledgement of the compliment.

  “You might have worked your magic sooner,” snarled Sigvatr. The old warrior was tying a rag about a cut along his forearm. “These devils killed six of our men before they were driven off!”

  “He raises a point,” Wulfrik said, fangs gleaming. “The hobgoblins were already beaten. A poor time to decide to enter the fray.”

  There was challenge and suspicion in Wulfrik’s tone.

  “I could not be sure the monsters didn’t have a wizard of their own,” Zarnath said. “I had to be ready in case they did. Only when their attack faltered was it clear to me they had no such help to draw upon.”

  Wulfrik nodded, his anger appeased by the shaman’s reasoning. Sigvatr’s anger, however, was far from spent.

  “The attack ruins our chance of catching the dwarfs by surprise,” the old reaver said. “Stefnir tells me the fire dwarfs use these creatures as soldiers. The ones that attacked us may have been a patrol from Dronangkul. Even now they’ll be riding back to tell their masters about us!”

  Zarnath smiled and shook his head in disagreement. “Hobgoblins are sneaks and cowards by nature. The only things they
respect are strength and fear. They serve the dwarfs because they fear them, not from any bonds of loyalty or blood. If they had defeated us, they would have crowed about their victory to their masters. But they lost here. The dawi zharr are famed for their cruelty, and their temper. No, these hobgoblins won’t report their failure. They’ll slink back to their holes and try to pretend this never happened.”

  “If you’re wrong, we’ll be walking into a trap,” Sigvatr snarled.

  “Then we walk into a trap!” Wulfrik told his friend. “And we’ll walk out again! If these dwarfs think they can keep me from what I want then they are bigger fools than the hobgoblins! I’ll spill every drop of their blood before I leave this place empty-handed!”

  “And what of our blood?” Sigvatr demanded.

  Wulfrik fixed him with a cold gaze. “To break this curse, I’d spill every drop of that as well.”

  Chapter Five

  A great gaping pit marked the site of Dronangkul, looking as though it had been gouged from the earth by a titan’s axe and then left to fester. The place could be smelled long before it could be seen, a fiery, metallic reek almost as bad as the stench of the River Ruin. Great towers of blackened basalt and walls of stone surrounded the approaches to the pit. A wide road, its course flanked by gibbets, marched down from the wastes beyond the stronghold to end at the huge iron gates which guarded the entrance to the site.

  From their vantage point in the rocky hills overlooking Dronangkul, the northmen could see the layout of the dwarf outpost. The entire northern wall of the pit was given over to a vast open mine. An army of slaves attacked the wall, pounding away at it with hammers while sneering hobgoblins whipped them with lengths of chain. There didn’t seem to be any humans among the slaves, but rather a motley collection of goblins and orcs of every size and shape. Even Wulfrik had to grudgingly respect anyone tough enough to beat obedience into an orc.

  Some small distance from the open mine squatted a huge stone building. Fluted towers rose from the roof of the structure, great chimneys that belched black smoke into the sky. Lines of slaves pushed heavy carts laden with ore into the building. Wulfrik decided it must be some kind of foundry, an observation reinforced by the copper flumes which emptied from one of the outer walls to flush out waste. The flumes disgorged their contents into a vast sump-pond. The slurry of industrial muck in the sump looked every bit as foul as the polluted river, with great blocks of slag jutting up from the morass and a green fog of noxious gas drifting just above the surface.

  The dwarfs, at some point, had built dams to restrain the sump, but clearly had lost interest as the mine workings had expanded. A steady stream of pollution was sloshing over the lowest side of the pond, pouring down into the excavations below. A great, mucky pool of the slush was growing in the deepest part of the pit, a system of crude catwalks and wooden bridges criss-crossing the toxic lake. The hobgoblins who whipped slaves across these pathways had heavy rags tied across their faces and thick goggles over their eyes. Their charges, however, had to protect themselves as best they could by holding their breath and keeping only one eye open.

  Wulfrik soon saw why the dwarfs had allowed the polluted lake to grow. Watching the lines of slaves being herded across the bridges, he saw the pit where they were held. Situated on the other side of the lake, any escape or revolt would have to use the bridges to have any chance of success. These points could be easily controlled from a few key positions and at each of these chokepoints a wooden tower had been raised. Hobgoblins stood guard in each tower, manning the ramshackle bolt-throwers mounted upon the roofs.

  Turning away from the mine and slave pen, Wulfrik studied the upper tiers of the pit. A large area was given over to colourfully painted hide tents, looking like nothing so much as the bivouac of a Kurgan tribe. The bone-strewn kennels of giant wolves made it obvious the encampment belonged to nothing human. Still, the size of the camp surprised Wulfrik. He would have expected many more hobgoblins given the number of slaves down in the mine.

  Above the hobgoblin camp, looming over it like the castle of a southling lord, were the homes of the dwarfs themselves. Guard towers of basalt flanked the causeway leading up from the foundry and the mine. The sentries Wulfrik could see patrolling the battlements were shorter than the hobgoblins but far broader and more powerfully built. They wore heavy armour crafted from scales of steel and heavy plates of bronze, their faces locked beneath metal helms. Even from a distance, Wulfrik could see the long black beards of the dwarfs, the hair curled into heavy ringlets. The hook-headed axes the dwarfs carried looked especially vicious, capable of lopping off a man’s arm as neatly as a dandelion-head.

  Past the towers was a cramped cluster of stone buildings, crushed together as though their presence in the outpost had been an afterthought. Each of the buildings bore a bronze glyph above its entrance, each different from the next. The Gift of Tongues gave Wulfrik no facility to decipher writing; he was unable to decide if the bronze runes denoted the trade of the inhabitants, their clan allegiance or perhaps the mark of some guild affiliation. Between the clustered buildings there rose covered storehouses, their floors piled with iron ingots. Small groups of slaves with dwarf overseers worked in the storehouses, sometimes removing new ingots from carts drawn up from the foundry to pile onto the floor, at other times loading ingots into big wagons drawn by teams of black oxen. Once full, the wagons would slowly head for the outer gates of the stronghold, heading out along the road through the desert.

  Towering over everything else in the outpost was the ziggurat: a huge structure masterfully crafted from immense blocks of basalt, adorned with runes cast in gold, its summit capped in spiked turrets of steel. For many minutes, Wulfrik watched the ziggurat, studying the squads of dwarf warriors marching from its bronze doors.

  There was a great deal of activity in the stronghold, activity that boded ill for the Norscan’s quest. He turned his head and again considered the main gates of Dronangkul. Here the activity was even more distinct. Mobs of wolf riders were leaving the outpost, prowling back across the desert. Near the gates, he could see several dwarfs crucifying an especially large hobgoblin. As they finished their grisly labour, they lifted the pole to which the greenskin had been nailed and set it upright in a hole to one side of the road. A gang of hobgoblins pointed at the crucified prisoner and laughed at his fate. One of them ripped the leather cap from his head and threw it into the prisoner’s face. Then, with a flourish, he put on an extravagant iron helmet adorned with horns to replace the discarded cap.

  “So much for them not saying anything about us,” Sigvatr observed, scowling at Zarnath.

  “Looks like one of them decided ratting out his chief was a good way to advance his own position,” Broendulf said, gesturing at the scene playing out at the gates. He looked over at Wulfrik. “What do we do now?”

  “We go in,” Wulfrik answered, eyes never leaving the dwarf citadel.

  Sigvatr blinked in disbelief. “There’s no glory in suicide,” he told Wulfrik. “They’re on the alert, waiting for us!”

  Wulfrik shook his head. “I did not come this far to turn back,” he warned his friend. “I’m going in there. I’m going to find this Khorakk and I’m going to take the torc from his corpse.”

  “They’re waiting for us!” Sigvatr insisted.

  “No,” Wulfrik corrected him. “They’re looking for us.” He pointed at the large company of wolf riders loping off into the desert. “That lot is riding back to where we fought their friends. They’ll try to pick up our trail there. That gives us a day at least before they get there and then follow us back. While the wolf riders are gone so is the better part of their garrison.”

  Stefnir frowned at the champion’s reasoning. “The dwarfs won’t fall as easily as their hobgoblins. I’ve seen them. They’re tough, nasty bastards who don’t run from a fight.”

  Wulfrik grinned at the Aesling. “Then we’ll give them something else to fight.” He turned and faced Broendulf. “You always said you
were the best climber in Ormskaro,” he told the huscarl. “Now you’ll have the chance to prove it. Take Jokull and a few others who think they can make the climb. There’s a crevice at the lip of the pit right over the slave pens.”

  “You want us to climb down and free the slaves?” Broendulf asked. The Sarl looked doubtful of the idea. “What makes you think they’d help us? You can’t trust an orc.”

  “You can,” Wulfrik told the fair-faced warrior. “You can trust an orc to charge right at his enemy and try to kill it.”

  Sigvatr disapproved of the idea. “They’ll never make it past those watchtowers. And if they did, the dwarfs could just cut the bridges.”

  Wulfrik patted his old friend’s shoulder. “Exactly!” he boomed. “The dwarfs will have to cut the bridges! They’ve sent most of their hobgoblins off to look for us, so they’ll have to deal with the slaves themselves. Every dwarf that goes down to stop the orcs is one less standing in my way.”

  “Even if your plan works, we’d need to find Khorakk in a hurry,” Sigvatr pointed out. “We have no idea where he is.”

  “But we do,” Wulfrik assured Sigvatr. “He’ll be holed up in his citadel. I’ve been watching the dwarfs. The ziggurat is where they are all going to get their orders. If Khorakk’s the one running things here, then that’s where he is.”

  “Okay,” persisted Sigvatr, “but how do you know he won’t head down into the mines when we free the slaves?”

  “What glory is there in killing slaves?” Wulfrik asked. “Dwarfs are not so different from men in that regard. They thrive upon glory in battle. Khorakk will leave putting down the slaves to his underlings.” He looked at Stefnir. “Does that sound right to you?” The Aesling nodded his head in agreement.

  “That still leaves getting into the ziggurat,” Arngeirr said. The reaver gestured with his false leg at the thick bronze doors guarding the outpost’s main gate. “We’d need a battering ram the size of the Seafang to break those down.”