The Wanderer's Tale (3 page)

The door that separated Scathur from the marauders outside was strong. Forged by the fire-giants from adamantine steel in the depths of their deepest, most hallowed smithies, strengthened by the ichor of unspeakable underworld deities, and embellished with silver images – of the fires of the infernal abyss – which framed its broad surface, it was able to withstand even the mightiest of the Peladanes’ siege-engines.

But
they
had magic too. For the worshippers of Pel-Adan had come prepared this time. Even now the Jutul-wrought portal that stood between them and victory was buckling under the power of their magic-users’ spells. The silver tongues of flame bordering the door now glowed fiercely red from the heat of the magic that was beginning to consume them, resembling now more closely the legendary fires that they imitated. A few moments more, and the door would explode.

In the huge but crowded passageway outside the Chamber of Drauglir, Arturus Bloodnose stood fidgeting behind the vanguard of his men. As smoke gradually filled the air, and the fountain of blue sparks struck from the yielding steel increased in brilliance, so the sweat trickled increasingly down the High Warlord’s fleshy face. All the while, a continuous stream of arcane power poured from the magic-users’ fingertips, relentlessly wearing down the resistance of the giant-built portal. In seconds it would be down, and nothing would stand between Drauglir and his fate. Then those long years of meticulous planning, rigorous training and endless diplomatic exchanges between the Peladanes and the other armies of the Fasces league would soon be vindicated. And Arturus Bloodnose, High Warlord of Pel-Adan, bearer of the Holy Great-sword, was the one ordained to wield that fatal stroke.

As he gripped the hilt of this ancient blade, clamping and unclamping his fingers around its sweat-sodden leather grip, his men could sense the panic that threatened to snap their leader’s nerve in this overcrowded place. Yet they also knew perfectly well that he would not be the first to enter the chamber, for that glorious duty was the lot of others. Not the Elite, those fanatics of his bodyguard who had trained for years for just this final assault, protected throughout the siege itself by lesser fighters so they could be here for the
coup de grâce
. Instead this honour fell to the Anointed, that special corps who had been granted the privilege of providing the first wave of the Soldiers of God to finally come to grips with the Evil One.

Arturus glanced over at them briefly as they were hustled up from the rear. Pressed tightly together, the hundred and fifty Anointed were soon assembled immediately behind the magic-users. Though future sagas would never dwell on this, the Anointed were a mixture of old men who had seen better days and young boys who might never get that chance.

A good combination of wise experience and youthful vigour
, Arturus assured himself as he stepped further out of the way.

The old men were trembling in anticipation, tears and death in their eyes; the boys, some looking as young as eight, merely gaped around themselves in puzzlement. All bore whatever scraps of armour and weaponry they had managed to scrounge from their families.

The seconds ticked down, and the magic-users were coming to the end of their task. Everyone was braced ready. One hundred and fifty pairs of eyes now fixed themselves on the Warlord’s, but somehow he found he was not able to meet theirs. They were waiting for a few encouraging words from him, but none were forthcoming. As soon as these Anointed had been blasted into bubbling jelly by Drauglir’s infernal power, the Warlord would still be safely at the rear, ordering the Elite next into the hall of death. Only when all real danger had passed would he enter the hall to claim his victory.

Then, with a sudden deafening thunderclap that stole a heartbeat from all there, the door finally gave way. The power that had held it shut was at last overcome by the concerted battering of the magic-users’ spells. A split-second of dazzling blue light was followed by the heavy crunch of the door slamming against the inside wall. A thick plume of smoke billowed out, but not a second was wasted. Though choking and half-blinded, the Anointed hurled themselves through the doorway . . . and into whatever lay beyond.

‘Spread yourselves out! Don’t bunch together!’ came the hoarse cry of the Warlord, just in case any of them were still alive. He paused for a moment, then with a wave of his sword sent the Elite through the smoke next.

Getting ready to send the third wave in, Arturus paused to reflect that something was clearly wrong. Despite a frenzy of angry shouting and a furious gale of missile-throwing, there was no roar of immolating flames, no death screams, no hint of rawgr-generated carnage. It almost sounded as if his advance troops were somehow prevailing . . .

Through the wall of smoke that yet hung around the blasted doorway, Arturus could see nothing. But it sounded as if his own men were moving further in, pursuing something . . .

The sweat was oozing from every clammy pore, and his already laboured heart had begun pounding like the drums of war.
What was happening in there?

Suddenly he almost leapt for joy as he heard the voice of Gwyllch, his chief bodyguard, bellowing above the din.

‘Lord Bloodnose, he’s dead!’

His world now safe again, Arturus boldly strode through the pall of smoke and into the Chamber of Drauglir.

To his surprise, not a single one of his own men was dead. The room, in fact, seemed completely devoid of enemy. No dark knights, no necromancers, not even the dreaded stained-glass demons. The only remnant of the evil of Vaagenfjord Maw now lay unmoving at the top of the ziggurat. Inert, prostrate, with a long sword buried in its heart.

The Evil One? Could it really be . . . ?

Then his disbelieving stare was wrenched off to the right, where the main body of his forces was still engaged in some kind of pursuit. Standing with the Anointed, who seemed at a loss as to what to do next, Bloodnose peered at the obscure scene and realized that the Elite had discarded most of their weapons and were now in full cry after a single fleeing figure that was now disappearing into the darkness of the far end of the hall. There followed a flurry of useless activity and much shouting in cheated fury and frustration.

Minutes later, Gwyllch came bounding back to the Warlord with a look of indignant wrath upon his ruddy features.

‘My Lord,’ he breathed hoarsely, ‘the rawgr Scathur seems to have eluded us, for the moment. But behold, Drauglir is
dead
!’

Bloodnose was lost for words. He could hardly believe his good fortune.

‘Thank you, my man,’ he managed at last, and turned towards the ziggurat. ‘You’re absolutely sure that thing’s dead, aren’t you?’

‘Absolutely, my Lord,’ Gwyllch replied. ‘I climbed up myself and checked.’

‘Well done, then,’ Arturus nodded. ‘You can leave this to me now.’ And, clutching his Holy Greatsword, he began to ascend.

‘Actually,’ he called back as an afterthought, ‘you can go first, if you like.’

With Gwyllch several paces behind him, the warlord began ascending the ziggurat. The closer he got to the altar, the more reassurance he felt that the still form atop it was, as Gwyllch claimed, truly dead. And when he cautiously gained the topmost step and gazed down at the lifeless hulk of the once-terrible Rawgr lying motionless upon the cold stone, Arturus knew he need fear no more.

‘Drauglir is dead!’ he cried out in triumph.

He savoured these words that he and generations of forebears had dreamed of uttering for so long, but which none had yet dared believe would ever actually be said.

Yet despite his relief, here at the end of all his exertions and tribulations, there lurked a cutting shard of disappointment, a bitterness that began to saw its way through his elation and would remain eternally buried in his heart, tainting his long-coveted victory.

For
he
was the one meant to slay the bringer of all their woes, cutting this cancer of corruption from the world and ending forever the threat of a dark and terrible future.
He
was the one who should look forward to being celebrated for centuries to come, as the Hero of the Age immortalized in the songs of the skalds and akynns.

Yet the Enemy lay here already dead, his destruction snatched from Bloodnose’s outstretched fingers by the hands of another. Just who had plunged that sword into the Rawgr’s heart, Arturus did not yet know or even care right now. He felt, inexplicably, that it had been planted in his own.

Grasping it firmly by the hilt, Bloodnose wrenched the offending weapon out of the corpse and hurled it all the way down to the floor below, using all the strength that his fat arms were capable of. Those of his followers not vainly engaged in the hunt for Scathur (which meant mainly the young boys, who were now laughing and busy playing tag) flinched as the steel rang loudly upon cut marble and clattered into silence in some dark corner of the huge room.

Now the sacking of Vaagenfjord Maw could commence. Every item of worth or unworth would be destroyed. Any statue or idol small enough to be brought down from its plinth would be smashed into powder. All icons or standards would be burnt. All books, tomes, librams, scrolls or any other record of dark arts practised here would be utterly eradicated. The whole place must be purged of Evil from top to bottom, erasing any chance of even a small remnant of Drauglir’s influence remaining on this benighted island.

At least, that is what history would later recall.

And amid the noise of destruction, no one would notice the frail, mail-clad hand of an old man reach into a dark recess, withdraw the blade that had slain the Rawgr, and slip it quietly beneath his tunic.

The destruction of Vaagenfjord Maw was a thorough yet hurried process. For although nearly every living thing that had dwelt in the den of the Rawgr perished in the siege, and nearly everything else in it was either destroyed or removed, it had been the original intention to raze the entire place down to its very foundations. Instead the actual fortress survived almost intact. Carved as it was into the very mountainside, and massive beyond the reckoning of the Peladanes, not even the most ardent efforts of the most skilful artisans could make much of a dent in it. How could it be brought down to its foundations when its foundations stemmed from the very earth itself? And the Peladanes, however well supplied, could not survive for too long on that remote arctic island.

So they had to content themselves with destroying or illicitly appropriating whatever they could lay their hands on, otherwise leaving the whole place as an empty memorial to all that had transpired there.

Many grumbled that their search had not been thorough enough, and that there must still be hidden places storing great treasures. Others feared that it would attract new evil to it were it left open, so the entire complex was sealed and entrusted to the guardianship of the Oghain, whose homeland lay but a few days away over the water.

But in time, as often happens, original priorities are forgotten, and even the sentinels eventually drifted away. Vaagenfjord Maw came to be just a name, a place of ill omen that lay safely remote somewhere far, far away to the North. Out of both sight and mind, it became nothing more than a kind of bogeyman, a byword for evil.

Despite the strict decree that all items found there were to be destroyed on pain of death, most Peladanes felt that the vanquished Rawgr owed them something, and they resorted to the time-honoured rule of war that plunder was the right of the conqueror. As a result, many innocuous souvenirs managed to find themselves resting upon the mantelpieces of returning veterans, or hanging from their parlour walls gathering dust. Many, in time, were lost, broken or discarded, and not a few eventually reached the marketplaces of the South to be sold as relics of the glorious campaign. They represented a profitable source of income for those soldiers who bargained wisely.

Eventually, centuries later, at a time when the names of Drauglir and Vaagenfjord Maw had passed into the ignominy of folklore, and nearly all the relics of that place had disappeared or disintegrated one way or another, one such item found itself again heading for the bargaining table. Wrapped up in a thick layer of oily sackcloth, a long and curiously shaped sword was being brought to market. Dumped carelessly atop a small pile of millet sacks, it was bounced about in the back of a large camel-cart with every bump in the road.

Amongst the other payload in the cart on this day were several kegs of dried ox-meat, a cartwheel being taken to town for repair, and two dark-skinned men dressed in rough camelhair cloaks. Their heads wrapped in grubby
cheches
to keep out the dust, they were jolted up and down uncomfortably as they slumped awkwardly against the millet sacks. One had on a tether a small brown-and-black goat that crouched wretchedly between a huge basket of green lemons and a tobacco bale. Now and then its owner would stretch out his leg lazily and kick it for daring to pass its droppings, thus confusing the cringing, bleating animal even more. A third man, lighter-skinned with blond hair and an untidy red beard (clearly a traveller from the North), sat upon a large pile of rugs, wondering if he could jump unnoticed from the cart and avoid paying his fare.

A large iron-bound chest was tucked unobtrusively but carefully between two crates of dates. This was heavily padlocked as it contained some unusual items that might just make this whole dusty, sweaty journey worth all the bother. The driver of the cart hated this particular route. Snaking up by the banks of the Qaladr and through the desert, the road was open to all sorts of danger: wild animals, thieves and, worst disaster of all, the very real possibility that any one of the vital water-holes along the way might have dried up. Was it all worth it just to sell the pathetic selection of wares he now carried in the back?

Still, at least he had those little bottles of smelly stuff in the chest there. Those and the carefully wrapped bars of metal, those strange ‘scholarly instruments’ – whatever they might be – and the jars of powders. They should fetch a good price, just so long as the alchemist was still in business.