Dead Man's Steel Read online

  What happened next caused Eremul to freeze in disbelief halfway through mumbling a protective spell intended to shield Monique. General Saverian leaped impossibly high, spinning in mid-air just as the first wave of arrows descended. The projectiles bounced off his twirling cloak, batted aside as though the black fabric were woven steel. Halfway through his mighty leap Saverian somehow levelled his shoulder-cannon with one hand. The noise that followed was like a row of black powder barrels exploding one after the other. An endless stream of tiny metal projectiles tore through the air, punching holes in Dorminian bodies and leaving them reeling away spraying blood, or collapsing stone dead to the cobbled streets.

  Like a miniature whirlwind Saverian hit the ground. Now his crystalline longsword was in his hand, and he covered the remaining twenty paces to the rebels in a straight dash that seemed to bend space and time. He slashed one way and then the other, all perpetual motion, his translucent blade hacking off limbs and cutting men in half like a great whirring saw, so fast the Halfmage couldn’t even begin to follow his movements. Lashan was one of the last to die, his sword hand sent flying in one direction while his head soared off in another.

  In fewer than ten breaths it was over. The docks were a red mess of hacked-apart bodies and spreading pools of blood. Saverian bent to retrieve his shoulder-cannon, then straightened and sheathed his sword in one perfect motion. He blew softly on the smoking tip of the barrel and strode over to Eremul.

  ‘Anger is the hallmark of the lesser races,’ he stated. ‘Of the animals and beasts. True power is obtained through transcendence. Your words mean nothing. They are the bark of an angry dog. Tomorrow the city of Thelassa will be Reckoned. This city will follow it. Make the most of your final days.’

  General Saverian turned and strode towards the waiting ship. Melissan and Nym quickly followed behind him. Isaac hesitated, then with an apologetic glance at Eremul he joined the rest of his kind in inspecting the Breaker of Worlds, the terrible weapon that would finally be employed on the morrow.

  The Halfmage stared straight ahead. Towards the north of the city, and the Refuge. ‘We are leaving now,’ he said hollowly. In his shame he couldn’t look at Melissan. The dampness of his robes told its own story.

  He had pissed himself.

  Bent, Not Broken

  ✥

  HE AWOKE TO the sound of lapping water. He opened his eyes, stared up at the iron sky. It was still snowing, but nightfall was close now. A thick layer of snow had settled on his body and he shook it off, wiping flakes away from his face. Magnar was beside him, his son’s chest rising and falling in an easy rhythm beneath a blanket of white. Kayne cleared it away, terrified of what he would find beneath. But there was no sign of the knife that had been embedded in his son’s chest.

  Kayne examined his own body. He had raw scars on his wrist, on his arm, on his side where the spear had entered him. He poked around his mouth. One or two teeth were missing but his jaw was unbroken.

  ‘I am reminded of the first time we met. You killed to win my favour. I healed you then, as now.’ The voice was paper-thin, as ancient as the trees scattering the hills around them.

  Kayne shot up from the snow, clambering to his feet. His body still ached something fierce, but by any measure he should be dead from the wounds he had taken before he had collapsed. He looked around for the source of the voice. For the man who had saved his life and that of his son. Found him standing beside the lake, his back to Kayne. A frail figure, child-thin beneath the robes.

  The Shaman.

  The Magelord turned slowly. Reached up with wrinkled, age-spotted hands and threw back the cowl.

  Kayne’s breath caught in his chest. The Shaman looked ancient. He looked like a corpse, or as close to a corpse as something that still drew breath could get. The only feature of his appearance that was in any way reminiscent of the imposing immortal Kayne had once known were his blue eyes, though even they were dulled by age now – rheumy and covered in cataracts.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Kayne whispered.

  ‘This.’ The Shaman pulled open his robe, revealing a chest more shrivelled than an apple left out in the sun for a month. Beneath the wrinkles, near the heart, was a festering hole. The flesh was black and leaked pus. The smell was terrible even from this distance, and Kayne had to turn away or gag. ‘A projectile cast of demonsteel. Fired from the fehd weapon this usurper somehow discovered.’ The Shaman nodded at the smouldering skeleton standing in a pool of meltwater beside the remains of the campfire.

  The paralysis spell that had frozen Krazka in place while he burned alive continued in death. The expression on his fire-blackened skull was one of bemused fury. The bones of his fingers still clutched the weapon in his charred death grip, but the strange object was ruined now, the metal barrel bent and blistered. ‘Demonsteel is anathema to magic,’ the Shaman continued. ‘The metal lodged within me is a poison I cannot survive. You should take the usurper’s sword, Kayne. It is a formidable weapon.’

  Kayne bent down to retrieve Krazka’s demonsteel blade. He hesitated. Then he picked up his old greatsword, the battered blade his friend Braxus had forged for him all those years ago. He stared at both and frowned. ‘It ain’t the weapon that makes the man. It’s the man that makes the weapon.’

  He spun and hurled Krazka’s sword over the lake. Watched it disappear beneath the water to sink to the depths, an evil weapon that if the spirits were kind would never surface to take another life.

  He sheathed his own greatsword and went to check on Magnar. His son was still unconscious, awful thin and badly scarred from all kinds of torture Kayne didn’t even want to think about. But at least he was alive.

  He turned back to the Shaman. ‘Why?’ he asked simply. ‘After all that happened between us. Why save our lives?’

  The Shaman was silent for a moment. When he replied, it was in a whisper so strained Kayne struggled to hear it above the wind. ‘I loved a woman once. In the time before the war on the gods, the Congregation caught her and burned her alive. They used demonsteel to defeat our magic. It broke me. I was weak then, Kayne. I thought to become someone else. So I came here, to your country, a place no other Magelord cared to claim. I made myself a god. A god whose dominance could never be questioned. Those who did not heed my laws, I broke.’

  ‘You tried to break me.’

  ‘Yes. Yet you could not be broken. I was the weakest of Magelords. But you, you were always the strongest of men. Your people need you now, Sword of the North.’

  As if to illustrate his words, the Magelord pointed a shaking finger across the lake. Kayne squinted, trying to see through the snow. He could make out shapes. Profane shapes. Hundreds of them, crawling and slithering across the snow. He recognized demonkin and blink demons, but there were other, even fouler kinds he had never before set eyes upon in all his time as a Warden.

  ‘They’ll catch us before we’ve made it a mile,’ Kayne said. ‘We’re too late.’ He bent down and scooped up Magnar, shocked at how little his son weighed. There was nowhere to flee, nowhere they wouldn’t be hunted down within the hour.

  Then Kayne became aware of movement around him. He turned slowly as clawed feet padded across the frozen ground the length of the lake. A menagerie of beasts melted from the snowstorm: bears and wolves. Elk and reindeer. Highland cats, their fur as white as the snow, near invisible save for their yellow eyes.

  ‘The last of the Brethren,’ the Shaman explained. ‘They will make their final stand here.’ He lifted his arms, arms so thin they made a mockery of the bulking biceps the Magelord had once boasted. ‘I was always the weakest of Magelords, and to create a Portal is one of the hardest feats of magic. I have little magic left, and so I give myself. My divinity. The stolen essence of the gods. My gift to you, Kayne. My apology.’

  There was a great tearing sound. The air around the Shaman began to waver, ripples of air forming and distorting the lake beyond until it was no longer a lake but the rolling hills of the Green Rea
ching. Through the magical doorway Kayne could see a great train of folk fleeing south: a vast diaspora of Highland people fleeing the demon horde rampaging through the Fangs.

  ‘Go,’ the Shaman whispered. Motes of gold and silver were streaming from him. He seemed to shrink and then fold as he struggled to maintain the Portal. ‘Take care of your son and find your wife. Lead our people to safety.’

  Kayne stumbled towards the wavering image of the Green Reaching. He glanced back just before he crossed the threshold. ‘What about you?’ he asked.

  The Shaman’s blue eyes blinked once. ‘All things die,’ he said simply. Then he began to break apart, streams of divine energy shooting out of holes in his body where his flesh had begun to crack; returning to the heavens from where it was stolen centuries ago. ‘Go,’ commanded the Shaman’s fading voice one last time.

  Gripping his son tight in his arms, Brodar Kayne plunged through the Portal.

  *

  ‘Even with the healing magic I have administered, his body is weak. But he will survive.’

  He breathed a sigh of relief and ran rough, callused hands down his face, feeling the month’s worth of beard, the scars and hard lines carving a history of violence in his features. The cold water might’ve washed away some of the grime but these scars would always remain, a constant reminder of what he was. Who he was.

  He looked up at the young sorceress who had just brought him the news. She was one of the few survivors of the magical contest between Heartstone’s circle and the Green Reaching’s cadre of sorceresses – a tragic waste of life. He remembered the knife quivering in the throat of the sorceress he’d killed, and winced. ‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to find my son.’

  The sorceress shrugged coolly. ‘You found him.’ Having delivered her update on Magnar’s condition, the woman turned and walked away. Kayne might’ve settled some personal business with Krazka but no one was celebrating him as a returning hero. This wasn’t a time for heroes and, besides, there was no outrunning the shadow of the things he had done. No outrunning the shadow of Red Valley or a score of smaller crimes.

  A familiar voice called out, ‘It is time.’ Kayne got up from where he’d been kneeling by the icy stream and exchanged a single nod with Orgrim Foehammer. The gathering of chieftains was about to start.

  The narrow valley in which the Shaman’s Portal had opened was only a few miles from the modest farmstead Kayne and Mhaira had lived for the best part of their married lives. He was desperate to take a horse and ride there now, but Carn had insisted he be present for a brief gathering between the chieftains of the West, Green and East Reachings. Soon the exodus would reach the Greenwild and inevitably the vast host of fleeing Highlanders would begin to spread out.

  Kayne made his way towards the looming figure in the middle of the snow-blanketed vale. Warriors streamed past, women and children too, everyone heading south. Towards the Lowlands. Tens of thousands of his people, chased from their homes by the invading demon horde.

  Carn was waiting, Oathkeeper’s point planted in the ground before him. Kayne and Orgrim arrived just as Brandwyn the Younger appeared out of a crowd of his countrymen. The chieftain of the Green Reaching stepped forward and immediately grasped Kayne’s hand, his skin softer and smoother than any warrior’s had a right to be. But then Brandwyn wasn’t truly a warrior: he was a governor and a councillor, more at home with numbers and politics than with a sword and shield. Brandwyn the Elder, his father, had been a true warrior. But he had also been a headstrong fool and his stubbornness had got a great many folk killed.

  Brandwyn the Younger smiled at Kayne from beneath a rust-coloured beard. He had small eyes and a weak voice. ‘Brodar Kayne. The Sword of the North. I hardly knew you growing up, but my father always spoke highly of you as his good friend.’

  ‘Aye. Your pa and me were close once,’ Kayne replied. Maybe they were too close. Maybe he should have swayed Brandwyn from his path long before it got to the point where he decided to break the Treaty and declare independence for the Green Reaching. Still, life had a lot of maybes; the only thing that really mattered was the certainty of the now.

  ‘Tell me how that son of a bitch died,’ Brandwyn the Younger said softly.

  Kayne blinked, a little taken aback. ‘Krazka or the Shaman?’

  The young chieftain’s eyes glittered. ‘Both.’

  Kayne thought for a moment. ‘Like they deserved,’ he answered.

  ‘To business,’ Carn rumbled, forestalling any further questions. ‘The bulk of the demon legion is still in the Heartlands. Once they are done killing all in their path, they will spread to the furthest Reachings. To the Sky Reaching and the Blue Reaching. To the Deep Reaching and the North Reaching.’

  ‘There any hope for them?’ Kayne asked.

  Carn shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Perhaps some may make it to safety. Hrothgar is a canny leader. But Narm Blacktooth hasn’t been heard from in many days.’

  ‘What of Mehmon?’ The chieftain of the North Reaching had been another friend of Kayne’s back in the day.

  Orgrim cleared his throat. ‘Frosthold was burned to the ground. I carried out the orders myself. Me and Krazka. Mehmon’s dead.’ Orgrim’s eyes filled with shame.

  ‘Dead,’ Kayne echoed. Mehmon had been a man of honour. There weren’t many of them left, seemed to him.

  ‘We all die eventually,’ said Carn. The look he gave Kayne was heavy with meaning. ‘But if we wish to save our people, we must forget those it is already too late to help.’

  There was a commotion just to the north and a squat, thickset warrior shouldered his way forward.

  ‘Mace!’ Orgrim exclaimed. ‘You made it.’

  The chieftain of the Black Reaching looked utterly spent, his dark hair matted to his head with sweat and his hairless chin scabbed from countless minor cuts.

  ‘By the skin of my balls,’ he snarled. ‘The demons caught up with us a few miles from Heartstone. We thought we was marching south to help retake the capital from the Butcher King. Instead, we walked into a fucking massacre.’

  ‘You did well to make it this far,’ Carn growled, holding out a hand in greeting. Mace grabbed it, the chieftain of the Black Reaching a foot shorter than but maybe just as wide as his counterpart from the West Reaching.

  ‘I had help,’ Mace said. ‘The Forsaken showed up. Turns out they abandoned the North Reaching weeks past. No one’s been sending supplies to the Icespire since Mehmon’s death.’

  The Forsaken. Kayne had only met a few members of the order in the past. They rarely left their fortress, the Icespire, which perched on the very edge of the frozen wastes. Those accepted into the ranks of the Forsaken tended to die on the job, alone on the tundra battling ice ghouls or worse. With one notable exception, they were the forgotten heroes of the Highland people.

  ‘There was another fellow too,’ Mace was saying now. ‘A lone warrior. Showed up halfway through the fighting. Killed more demons than any other three men combined. Wouldn’t lower his hood but his axes sang of death like the Reaver himself.’

  ‘Axes?’ Kayne repeated. He felt a chill run down his back. ‘He survive?’

  Mace shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t have thought so. Last I saw he was hopelessly surrounded.’

  ‘If the demons follow us here,’ Carn said, ‘it will be slaughter. We are spread out, our women and children vulnerable.’

  Orgrim hefted his great warhammer. ‘I’m gonna round up some warriors. My bravest and most loyal. I surrendered the East Reaching thinking to spare my people, but I see now the demons will spare no one.’ The big chieftain’s voice grew hoarse, the weight of his mistakes evident in his haunted eyes. ‘I let them in – and now my people, my countrymen, are dead. Let me die with them. Buy you what time I can.’

  Mace spat again. The good kind of spit that announces grim work needs doing and a man isn’t going to shy away from it. ‘I’ll gather my warriors and join you. Any who want to flee south are free to go. T
hose who want to stay and die like Highlanders can come with us.’

  ‘I fear no demon,’ Carn said. ‘But my people need a leader. I must stay with them.’

  Brandwyn rubbed his beard thoughtfully. ‘The demons have yet to enter my own Reaching. I will not sacrifice myself or my people. Besides, I need to organize our food supplies. Those we can transport south with us. It will be a long road to somewhere hospitable.’

  That left Kayne, who flexed his recently damaged wrist and stared into the distance. ‘Don’t reckon I fancy another trek south,’ he said slowly. ‘It’d be easier and maybe nobler to die fighting demons alongside the Foehammer. Like in times gone by.’ He nodded at Orgrim, who gave the ghost of a smile despite the tragedy on his face. ‘But I can’t stay. I made a promise to keep my son safe, and I ain’t going anywhere without Mhaira.’

  Carn tugged Oathkeeper free of the earth, shook the snow off the rune-etched blade. ‘You know the Lowlands better than any of us,’ he said. ‘I will see your son is cared for until you catch up with us. The Sword of the North is needed in the south.’

  They exchanged farewells, Kayne gripping Orgrim’s meaty hand in his own one last time. ‘Remember on the banks of the Icemelt, when you told me I had fire and steel? We were young then. Well, the fire’s gone out and I reckon the iron’s gone brittle with age, but you can’t say we had a bad run. Kept the Fangs safe from demons for thirty years.’

  ‘I broke,’ Orgrim said. ‘In the end, I broke.’

  Kayne shook his head. ‘You didn’t break. You bent. I reckon you can forgive anyone one moment of weakness. You’re a good man, Orgrim. One of the best I know.’ He reached out and clapped the big chieftain on the back. ‘Die as you lived. Defending our people.’

  Kayne watched his old friend depart, knowing this was the last time he would ever see him. Yet another face soon to belong to the past. The Shaman’s words came to him. All things die. Even a Magelord, a man whom he also might’ve called a friend once. Maybe the last of them.