Carnifex (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 1) (30 page)

And then a chilling thought struck him. He voiced it aloud.

“How do I know I’m not tainted?”

“Oh, Carnifex,” the axe said. Its tone was soothing, laced with compassion. “You are the son of Yyalla Thane. The blood of the Dwarf Lords runs in your veins. Do you really think anything spawned in the Abyss could change that?”

“So, it’s true? My ma really was a Dwarf Lord?”

Silence.

“Why won’t you answer? Tell me: were the stories Pa told us true?”

“Didn’t you trust your pa?” the axe asked.

“Trust him? Of course I…” But how could he know? How could he know the truth about Droom, let alone what he’d said?

“All will become clear,” the axe said. “You must have faith.”

“I don’t even know what that means.” Out of habit, Carnifex grabbed the kindling and tinderbox and set about getting the kitchen hearth lit.

“Trust me, and I will see you through.”

“Now you sound like Aristodeus.”
 

Have trust, and I will see you through, one way or the other. You are far too valuable to lose.

“He asked you to trust him? What did you say?”

This time, it was Carnifex who chose not to answer. He trusted the philosopher as much as he did the axe. It was all in the balance. He had no way to discern truth from fiction. All he knew was what he saw, and felt, and heard: demons. Without the axe, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Either it was telling the truth, and he’d see things clearly once this was over; or it had its own agenda. But for now, it was all that was keeping him alive; the only thing that offered even the slightest glimmer of hope.

A spark took, and licks of flame danced along the kindling, burgeoning into a blaze beneath the stove. He filled the kettle with water from a keg and set it down to boil.

“They are outside,” the axe said. “They seek to prevent you from finding the untainted.”

“You mean there really are some left?”

“Thumil,” the axe said. “Cordy. A handful of others. You must not lose time searching. They will be under guard at the Dodecagon. If you linger here a moment longer, they will come for you in the confines of your home, where you will not have room to wield me to your best advantage.”

“And I can still save them? Cordy and Thumil?”

“It will not be easy.”

“I guessed that.”

“Much blood will have to be spilled.”

“I guessed that, too.” But demon blood wasn’t real blood. It wasn’t slaughter: it was the cutting out of a malignancy.

He removed the kettle from the stovetop. Kaffa would have to wait.

Hurrying to the front door, he drew back the bolt and listened. No sound from outside. Nothing. He cracked open the door. Still nothing. But they were watching the house; he was sure of it. He could feel their eyes on him.
 

He stepped onto the garden path. A clutch of red-wings loitered down by the smallholding. When they saw him, a whistle peeped.

He turned to shut the door. Movement blurred. Stones came away from the wall of the house. A dagger flashed. Faster than he could even think, the axe scythed through the air, and a demon crumpled to the ground. The wings shrouding it alternated between the gray of the house walls and the green of the garden grass, but little by little, they gave way to the crimson hue of blood.

The red-wings by the smallholding backed away as he passed, then they resumed tailing him. As he approached the Aorta, hearth lights flickered through the windows of one or two homes. It would soon be dawn, and the miners would be getting ready for work. Just the thought of it made him want to see for himself if anyone untainted was inside.
 

He crossed to a house and rapped on the door. The red-wings drew nearer, their weapons glinting amber in the light from the glowstones.

A demon opened the door. It was vaguely female, and in its arms it cradled a poisonous-looking baby. Carnifex recoiled. The demon screamed, and another demon—a male—appeared over her shoulder. Carnifex raised the axe, but the door slammed in his face. Before he could kick it down, the red-wings charged.

The axe sang as it tore into them, a dismal dirge with no words that seemed to define the spray of blood. This time, it was indeed a slaughter, and Carnifex felt the rancid ooze of steaming ichor drenching him. But with a flare of gold from the axe, the gore was burned away.
 

Corpses were strewn about the walkway in spreading pools of crimson. He almost felt sorry for them, and as he scoured the lifeless remains, he wondered if they’d felt anything when the blades bit into them. They had to have done. They’d screamed as they died.

He reached the Aorta unchallenged and climbed up to the fifteenth. Arrows fell like dark rain, but the axe deflected them with ease. At the top, a shield wall was waiting, comprised of dozens of red-wings. It surged toward him, and he smashed it apart. The survivors fled, and he ran down every last one of them. He was committed now. No more holding back. No more indecision.

Each level he drew nearer the seventh, the defense grew stronger, the defenders more numerous. Dozens swelled to hundreds. Rivers of blood became oceans. Tier after tier he conquered with indomitable strength, and he was growing stronger with every demon slain. The axe reveled in their blood; absorbed it; lapped it up, and passed it on to him as vitality. It was a wonder the Founders had ever lost it; a wonder they hadn’t triumphed in Gehenna with a weapon such as this.

He smashed through phalanxes, shattered ragged lines. Demons flung themselves wailing from the walkways rather than taste his axe. They roared, they howled, but most of all, they screamed. He surged past shield and sword, hammer and spear, chopping, crushing, splitting. Their blows came to nothing, blocked by the lightning-swift might of the axe. Some he saw coming a mile off, and deftly stepped around them. The few that made it through glanced feebly from his chainmail, and the fewer still that grazed him may as well not have bothered. The axe healed him, time and again.

It made him feel the stories about his ma were true. Was this how the Dwarf Lords had been? Yet there had only been one
Pax Nanorum
, one axe. Perhaps this was a power reserved only for the finest of the Immortals, the elite among the Lords; those of king’s blood.

And yet, if he’d been told he was a true immortal—a god—he’d have been hard-pressed to deny it. He grew insatiable for demon blood; drunk on it. And he surged inexorably toward the seventh level and the Dodecagon.

THE RAVINE BUTCHER

The seventh-level plaza was brimming with demons. Red-wings mingled with black in a bristling mass of shadow-formed weapons and obsidian shields. The connecting walkways were flowing with them, too: streams of scarlet that foreshadowed the rivers of blood that would soon replace them.

In the background, the covered approach to the Dodecagon stood as a stark reminder of all that had been lost, all the Abyss had taken from Arx Gravis: fluted pillars that spoke of a more civilized time; the statues of Arnochian kings and the glorious heritage they represented; and the scarolite doors of the council chamber itself. They, at least, might have kept the Council safe from the life-leeching hordes, but for the fact they could only be locked from the outside.

Vermilion sunlight bled across the sky visible between the upper levels. It merged with the canyon walls, poured out its libation upon them. Clouds of vultures spiraled in the thermals, descended like shadows upon the lower tiers. A murder of crows perched in judgment on the crest of an aqueduct.

All else was still as Carnifex walked toward the waiting army of demons. None of them moved; not a single one, save for the wavering of weapons, the flicker of flaming eyes.
 

The Axe of the Dwarf Lords thrummed with anticipation. It had been made for this—the smiting of evil; and now Carnifex realized that he had been, too. Through his boys, Droom had said, the dwarves would become like the Dwarf Lords of legend. The homunculus responsible for naming Carnifex and Lucius had told him as much. Hope, it prophesied, would spring from the womb of Yyalla Thane.

The axe seemed to follow his thoughts. “You will be their salvation, Carnifex. Together, we will drive this pestilence from the ravine, and make of the ashes of Arx Gravis another Arnoch. And then we will turn the survivors of your race into a new line of Dwarf Lords.”

It was a promise to raise Carnifex up on a wave of hope. It tempered his despair, honed his anger and gave it purpose. If he could just see this through, just climb one last blood-slick mountain of violence, a new age would dawn: a new age of pride and glory.

He quickened his pace to a jog, which built to a run, then a full-tilt charge. He crashed into the front ranks like a boulder. The axe was a whirling blur of gold, and the demons were chaff to be winnowed and threshed. Spears snapped, swords were sheered in two, hammers shattered on impact with the scintillant blades. Shield upon shield was dented and cleft. Weapons clattered to the ground like hail. Cries, screams, the slump and thud of bodies; the whoosh of air that followed the blistering strikes of the axe. It was intoxicating. Invigorating.
 

And the
Pax Nanorum
sang—a grisly symphony that harmonized the clangor of battle, the screams of the dying into a strident portent of victory. They were going to win. Together, they would triumph.

The ground beneath Carnifex’s feet was slick with gore—more blood than even the axe could burn away. It soaked into his britches, spattered his beard and face. He tasted its copper tang on his lips, savored it like mead. He was beyond the fear of contagion. He was a whirlwind, an elemental god of death. He was insane with righteousness. Glory effused from his every pore.

Corpses piled up around him. He climbed upon them, higher and higher as demons continued to fall. And then he glared down in rage and let cry a howl of frustration. He stood atop a mountain of the dead, the rest of the demons encircling its base in a sea of scarlet and black.

He roared at them to come on; screamed at them to face him. When they didn’t, he ripped the severed heads from his belt, held them aloft by their hair. It wasn’t enough. Still, no one dared stand against him.
 

He snatched up a broken spear, shoved its tip into the underside of a head then rammed the butt into the chest of a fallen demon. He did the same with the second head, then the third. And when the hordes still did not come on, he swept the axe down again and again, decapitating the dead and cramming their heads on spears, swords, anything he could find in the mound of bodies; and bit by bit he built a palisade around him in imitation of the dwarf skulls on spikes he’d seen in Gehenna. When he’d finished, he screamed out his challenge again.

At first, nothing happened. Then, as if they’d been given an inaudible command, the demon army parted, affording him a view straight down the colonnaded walkway with its statues of dwarven kings.

At the far end, the door of the Dodecagon ground open, and three figures emerged. The two either side were ghastly revenants, draped in hoary gowns of cobwebs. The one in the middle was a giant shrouded in glacial white. Its head was a polished orb, and its eyes were scorching sapphires. As it glided from the council chamber, flanked by its ghostly helpers, it held out an ebon skull with flaming patterns swirling upon its forehead.

Silence settled over the plaza, save for the steady drip, drip, drip of blood from the piled-up corpses, the swoosh of the crimson torrents cascading into the ravine.

As the three drifted nearer, Carnifex slipped and slid down the hill of the dead to wait for them at the bottom. His heart pounded. The axe pulsed in his palm. Its aureate glow guttered, as if it were unprepared for this new threat. Frightened, even.

Twenty paces from him, and one of the revenants howled like the wind gusting through the nooks and crevices of the chasm. In response, the red-wings drew back further, retreating onto the walkways that intersected with the plaza.

“Beware,” the axe whispered in his mind.

He didn’t need the warning. The severed jugular of his confidence bled him dry.

Fifteen paces from him, the hellish trio stopped to confer. He could see the patterns on the skull now: letters etched in ruby flame. They spelled a word that froze the blood in his veins, a name that cut to the heart of who he was:

Thanus
.

As the three devils continued toward him, his legs began to shake. The axe whispered at him to run, yelled at him, screamed.

Ten paces from him, and the world turned on its head.

The skull became a helm; the revenants, dwarves; the giant, a man in a white toga.

“Thumil?” Carnifex said, blinking over and over to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. “Cordy?” She still had on her wedding dress. Her face wore the ghastly pallor of dread.
 

Carnifex looked down at himself, at his blood-drenched britches. Gore clung thickly to his boots. His hands were stained red, all the way to his elbows. He lifted them to his face. It was sticky with clotting blood, setting over his features in a mask. And he knew what it looked like—the reflection in the window of the Scriptorium. Oh, shog, he knew.

A motley-clad dwarf in a tall hat came out of the Dodecagon: Stupid. He watched the trio before Carnifex, and his hat bobbed as he nodded. Behind him, white-robed councilors started to gather in the entrance. They were all looking toward Carnifex, eyes wide with horror, as if he’d done something wrong.

Aristodeus, carrying Yyalla’s scarolite helm, took a step closer. Then another. He mouthed something Carnifex couldn’t hear above the rush of blood in his ears. Another step, and the axe shuddered. Its golden dweomer died, left it blacker than shadow. Another step, and the
Pax Nanorum
recovered with a bloodcurdling cry. Its blades exploded in aureate brilliance, and the giant ghoul who’d been Aristodeus dropped the helm. It clanged and rolled across the walkway.

 
Carnifex took a lunging step forward, drew back the axe. The giant stumbled away. One of the revenants rushed in front, pallid hands raised. It was screaming at him, imploring him. Carnifex switched his ire onto it, swept the axe down. The revenant slipped on blood and pitched to its back. It was the only thing that saved it. Carnifex swore and stepped in for a second go, but the world tipped again.