Prince Maesa, page 19
The next day, a steep path took them down into a valley full of resinous pines and thick, perfumed silences. Not long after, they heard their first bird, and the joyful bubbling of streams. The road ceased its back and forth, the incline became shallower, and broadened out so that Maesa and Stonbrak could ride together side by side once more.
The road clung to the side of a ravine where a white river grew fat on tributaries rushing from the peaks. Still they saw no living being.
Evening came quickly. The sky turned a deep blue, then black. To their relief they saw the lights of a substantial village ahead, and before long reached a wooden gatehouse built across the road. Skulls mounted on spikes lined the parapet, dangling bunches of bronze charms. Three men manned the gate, and called out a challenge in some impenetrable local language. When they got no response, they tried the language of Sigmar’s realm.
‘Halt! Who goes there?’
‘Travellers,’ said Maesa. ‘An aelf and a duardin, we are. Maesa of the Wanderer Clans and Idenkor Stonbrak, merchant of Ulgu. We are passing through on our way to Hysh.’
‘You’re a long way off the God’s Road,’ said one of the other guards. His accent was thick, melodious. ‘Few come this way. What’s your business?’
‘Like he said, we’re passing through. There is no need for suspicion!’ barked Stonbrak. ‘We are people of honour. Let us in, we will not trouble you long, and if you have an inn, we’ll eat and drink there and make you all a little richer in return.’
The men looked at one another. They didn’t appear to know what to do.
‘Charms don’t say anything,’ said the second. He pointed at the wards hanging like fruit from the stakes.
‘All right,’ said the first. The third remained silent, and goggled at them in disbelief. ‘Open the gates.’
‘It’s not my turn,’ said the second.
‘Just do it! I’m watch master tonight.’
‘Grungni grant me patience,’ said Stonbrak out of the side of his mouth. ‘This is a crack crew and no mistake. You’d think they’d never seen a duardin come out of the mountains.’
The single gate creaked open. The goggler peered out from behind.
‘Light the torches while you’re at it,’ said the leader. The second guard grumbled and fetched a long burning brand that dripped pitch onto the ground. He lifted it to touch the gate torches alight.
‘Welcome, welcome,’ said the leader. He lit candles in the skulls with a spill to make their eyes glow. ‘Inn’s that way.’ He pointed up the road. ‘Have you had any trouble out there?’
‘Only an oppressive feeling in the high pass,’ said Maesa to the man, once they’d passed under the gate. It was a crude affair, a single row of palings with a rickety platform behind it.
‘Then you’re lucky. Dark things are afoot round here. Best be indoors.’
They rode on. The gate shut behind them.
‘That wood was fresh cut, and I suspect they are new to the business of watchmen,’ said Stonbrak. ‘What is going on here?’
The reception they received was lukewarm at best. People watched suspiciously as Maesa and Stonbrak rode down the road. The houses were hidden in the trees, built on large rocks, with foundations of drystone and walls of split timber. The road crossed the river in the village centre on an elegant single-span bridge, and by its side there was a square, surrounded by bigger stone buildings, these mortared and fairly built. One of these was an inn, and the travellers went in.
The locals inside spoke quietly, and watched the strangers suspiciously. The innkeeper was a man of few words, but polite enough, and served them roast ribs. He even found a passable wine for Maesa to drink.
‘There is something odd happening here,’ said Stonbrak. He lowered his voice to match the quietness of the others in the bar.
Maesa nodded. The prince ate nothing of the food given them, but fed morsels to Shattercap hidden away under the table. Maesa watched the door so intently, Stonbrak couldn’t help turning around to look himself.
As he did, it opened, and a man in fine clothes entered. He looked around the bar. As soon as his eyes lit on Maesa and Stonbrak, he hurried to them.
‘Uh-oh, here we go,’ said the merchant.
The man approached. ‘You are the strangers?’ he said.
‘I don’t recall living here, and I don’t see many of my folk here, so I’d say your guess is a fair one, manling,’ said Stonbrak.
‘Good, yes, of course,’ said the man nervously. ‘My name is Donagelli. I am one of the village council here. I have come… Er, may I?’ He indicated a spare seat.
‘Please,’ said Maesa.
‘I just wanted a quiet meal,’ said Stonbrak, pointedly tearing meat from a rib.
Donagelli sat down. ‘Yes, before I start, are you, well…’ He swallowed nervously and worked his hat through his hands. ‘Are you warriors? Fighters I mean?’
Maesa put his goblet down. ‘I have been. I can be. It is not all I am.’
‘I’m a merchant,’ said Stonbrak.
‘Oh,’ said Donagelli disappointedly.
‘You will not find a duardin who is not a warrior as well as whatever else he is,’ said Maesa.
‘Thanks,’ said Stonbrak sarcastically.
Donagelli brightened. ‘And, if I may ask, since you are an aelf…’ He spoke quickly to cover his nerves. ‘Do you have magic?’
‘A little,’ said Maesa.
‘More than he lets on,’ said Stonbrak gruffly. He doggedly ate his food.
‘My friend here has his own enchantments,’ said Maesa. ‘Runes upon his axe.’
‘Oh that’s just great,’ said Stonbrak. ‘Get me completely involved, why don’t you?’
‘I have a request,’ said Donagelli. ‘A task. The village council, that is to say, my fellows on the governing table, they chose me to come to you to ask that…’
‘What manner of evil troubles you?’ Maesa interrupted.
‘You know of it?’ Donagelli said.
‘We felt something in the mountains,’ said Stonbrak. ‘A beardling with a head like a brick could tell there was something nasty up here.’ He tossed his bare bone back onto the plate and looked at Donagelli for the first time. ‘Piles of skulls. Enchanted trinkets. Nervous incompetents on a new wall. Why don’t you just tell us what’s going on? Get it off your chest, manling, so we can decline to help, get a good night’s kip and move on.’
‘Forgive my friend Idenkor,’ said Maesa. ‘We have had a hard journey.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course, well…’ Donagelli looked back and forth between the two, asking permission to continue.
‘You may go on,’ said Maesa. The innkeeper returned and filled Maesa’s goblet. He hung around the table until Donagelli jabbered something at him in the local dialect, and he departed with a scowl.
‘Something is hunting us,’ Donagelli said. He leaned down onto the table and whispered. ‘It started last year, taking our livestock from the high fields. We heard mountain nomads up there had lost people, and we prayed that it would not come near us. But it does. It comes down at night from the peaks. The charms don’t scare it any more. It has become bolder. Last week it ventured into the lower pasture, even within sight of Widow Amanta’s cottage. We are not safe here. There is talk of abandoning the village, but where would we go? We have been here for generations, through the time of Chaos, and before. This is our home.’
‘What are we talking about?’ said Stonbrak. ‘Be more specific, manling. Big, little, dead, alive, wild, intelligent? There are as many dangerous things in the realms as there are stars in Azyr. What is it?’
‘They say it is huge, a grotesque phantom, yet somehow of solid flesh. Long arms, no legs, a terrible mouth. It lives in the place of the dead.’
‘Dead then,’ said Stonbrak. ‘I suppose you want us to go and hunt this thing? Well I’m not interested. Pointy-ears here and I have business in Hysh. Isn’t that right?’
Maesa stared at Donagelli. His violet eyes sparkled enigmatically.
‘We will help you,’ Maesa said.
Stonbrak rolled his eyes. ‘Perfect.’
‘Now?’ said Donagelli. ‘I can show you the way. I–’
‘Of course not now!’ snapped Stonbrak.
‘If it hunts at night, we will hunt it in the day,’ said Maesa.
‘Both of you?’ said Donagelli.
‘Three of us,’ said Maesa. Shattercap poked his head up over the edge of the table. Donagelli gasped.
‘Very well,’ said Stonbrak. ‘Mine’s four pints please.’
‘What?’ Donagelli had gone pale. Shattercap stuck out his tongue at him.
‘Do you want us to help you or not? We require payment,’ said Stonbrak, pointing at the bar. ‘Four pints of your weak manling ale would be a good start. Now. And another plate of meat.’ He jutted his chin out at Maesa, making his beard quiver. ‘Better get skinny here some more of that grape juice he likes too.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NAGASH’S CURSE
Hysh was high, and the sky dazzling. Wind blew over rocks and through the boughs of a solitary tree no taller than a full-grown man. The hollow knocking of wind chimes made of bones played sinister music. They hung from the gnarled branches of the pine, femurs making xylophone notes, skulls a hollow clocking. They jounced and leapt in the current of air coming off the mountains. Cold came with it, gathered from the high places where no man had ever ventured.
Maesa, Donagelli and Stonbrak strode a rough path. In places it was slick, the bedrock polished bright by generations of feet. Round stones waited to roll under careless boots. Whitewashed rocks marked out the way, but it had been long since the paint had been renewed, and they were hardly any different in colour to the unpainted stones. Stonbrak’s boots crunched loudly on ice and gravel. Donagelli’s footsteps were lighter and further spread. Maesa made no noise at all, nor did he disturb the stones he stood on.
Stonbrak’s pace was as relentless as only a duardin’s can be, and he reached the tree first. He stopped in its small shadow, and looked up through his goggles at the chimes.
‘That’s a grim display, and no mistake,’ he said. He took out his kerchief and mopped his brow, then drank from his canteen. The smell of small beer wafted from the top, and he let out an appreciative burp.
Maesa came to a soundless halt beside Stonbrak. Shattercap leaned forward on Maesa’s shoulder and sniffed warily.
‘I do not like these bony fruit, wicked prince. I do not like their knocking music. The tree is old, old as time. I like it less.’
Donagelli was last to the tree. He was mountain born, but panted in the rarefied air.
‘The bones’ chimes are not pretty, but they keep back the spirits of the mountain,’ he said. ‘Before the fiend came, the bones warded this path of the dead to our burial ground. They kept us safe from restless spirits. They warded the monster away for a while too. Not any longer.’
Shattercap hunched low onto Maesa’s shoulder. ‘And the fiend is beyond?’
‘Pah! I doubt it would want to snack upon a mouthful of twigs, forest daemon,’ Stonbrak chuckled. ‘It might use you as a toothpick after, mind.’
Maesa laid his hand on the tree. It was only a little taller than he. The trunk was twisted round on itself so that it had become fat as a barrel, and was covered with grey, scaly bark.
‘You say it haunts the heights all around this place?’
Donagelli nodded fearfully. ‘Yes, the pass you came through, and the meadows around the village, above the valley, the tent villages of the high herders. We have not been past the way of bones for months, not since the first of us began to die…’
‘Then you are brave to show us the way,’ said Maesa.
Stonbrak harrumphed.
‘We shall see what can be done. Go back to the valley, Donagelli.’
A look of profound relief broke across Donagelli’s face. ‘You do not wish me to come with you?’
‘Your presence will not be necessary,’ said Maesa.
‘Thank you, your highness, thank you, master duardin!’
‘Wait for our return for three days, no more,’ said Maesa.
Donagelli frowned. ‘What are we to do if you are not back by then?’
Stonbrak grinned broadly through his beard. ‘The good prince means we will not be coming back at all, in that case, so I’d move out if I were you.’
‘Very well. Three days, I understand,’ said Donagelli. ‘Sigmar be with you.’
‘Go,’ said Maesa.
Donagelli turned gratefully away and started back down the path, his footsteps crunching quickly. He stopped and he shouted over the wind.
‘The burial ground is not far. You’ll find the beast near there, if it is not inside the walls. That was where it was seen most often, before we abandoned the mountain to its hunger!’
He resumed his descent as quickly as was safe. He was soon out of sight.
‘Coward. See him run. Shattercap is scared but Shattercap is going!’
‘For once you and I are in agreement, twigling,’ Stonbrak grunted dismissively. ‘If he and his people had an ounce of iron to them, they’d be up here to burn the thing out themselves.’
Maesa let his hand trail down the bark. ‘Do not be too unkind, master duardin. These people are right to be afraid. The being that haunts the mountain cannot be easily overcome. They are not mages or warriors.’
‘Ha! Everyone is afraid,’ said Stonbrak. ‘Courage is hammering fear until it is sharp, and useful. Cowardice is letting fear master you. Is it your habit to help every creature who comes to you for aid? I was looking forward to a day’s rest. Now I find myself up this freezing mountain with a monster to face before breakfast.’
‘No one is forcing thou to go, bearded one!’ Shattercap hissed. ‘Not like me,’ he whined. ‘Poor Shattercap has no choice. Oh, wicked prince!’
Maesa turned away from the tree. The knocking chimes framed his horned helm. ‘I help those who I might, Master Stonbrak. There are many injustices in these realms. I am responsible for more than a few. It is my duty to put right those I can.’
‘Put it like that, I can see why every peasant with a problem should get a hearing,’ said Stonbrak. ‘It’s not like we have anything important to do.’
‘You may mock me, Idenkor Stonbrak, but know that your help is appreciated.’
Stonbrak shrugged the collar of his cloak higher. ‘You realise this thing they describe, a great phantom yet of flesh, bearing no legs but with monstrous arms, and beset with an unreasoning hunger that can never be sated…’ He sniffed hard. ‘It is, in all likelihood, a Mourngul.’
‘It is almost certainly so.’
‘You know these things are mightily powerful, ravening spectres, and are difficult to lay to rest?’ said Stonbrak.
‘I have faced worse foes,’ said Maesa.
‘Go back to your jewel-shop if thou art afraid,’ said the spite.
Stonbrak laughed. ‘Afraid, afraid? A duardin is never afraid, twigling. Besides, I could do with a good scrap. I am merely worried for your master. He is, after all, only an aelf.’
‘I thought thou wert interested only in the shinies,’ said Shattercap.
‘There’s more to a duardin than treasure, little twig. I like a fight. Still, my blade will grow blunt for lack of use if we’re not quick, and my stomach’s rumbling.’ He pulled his runic axe from the loop on his belt. ‘It’d be nice to slake my thirst and fill my belly before nightfall. Let’s be about it.’ Stonbrak pushed on up the hill. ‘Are you coming, little twigling?’ he called over his shoulder.
‘Yes,’ said Shattercap miserably.
‘He goes where I go.’ Maesa drew the Song of Thorns. It rasped out of its scabbard with a round, wooden sound. Once free, its edges glimmered with green magic, and it hummed faintly. ‘From here we walk with our weapons drawn.’
‘Aye!’ Stonbrak shouted back. ‘I’ll rely on good duardin steel. You stick with your pointy branch, noble prince.’ He started to whistle.
Together they headed to the burial ground.
The three of them passed into a deep gulley. Wind carrying an abrasive cargo of grit rattled on Stonbrak’s armour. It hooted and moaned through natural sounding chambers, mournful as the clatter of the bone chimes.
‘Good stone round here,’ said Stonbrak. ‘Solid grain. You could make a fine hold in mountains like these!’
He looked up and around the canyon. His armour jingled as he ran his gloved hand along the wall. The leather rasped.
‘Very good stone. A shame about this ravine though. If the roof hadn’t worn through, this would be a very adaptable cave. I can see it now, carved into shape, good steps, not too deep or steep, alcoves for guards. A good position, defensible. I suppose it could still be covered over…’ He frowned to himself, picturing elegant windows in the lumpy rock.
‘Duardin have not lived in these mountains for centuries, Master Stonbrak,’ said Maesa.
‘Perhaps they will again. It is time for the Dispossessed to hew new halls into the mountainsides. Or all other right-thinking people will assume we’ve all set ourselves on fire, or ascended into the clouds like that Thringsson.’
‘Many ways, for many lands,’ said Maesa. The gulley was wide enough for them to spread out a little. Maesa walked the centre of the path, while Stonbrak stayed close to the walls.
‘Cultural diversity is all fine if you’re an aelf, but what about tradition, and the old way of doing things? Our customs served us for generations before all these new-fangled sky-ships. And the Fyreslayers! Maniacs! Arsonists to a duardin. If I had my way, it’d be back to picks, stone and well-crafted–’
Stonbrak’s diatribe was brought to a halt by a loud squelch. He screwed his eyes shut.
‘Oh my ancestors, what did I step in?’
