The Nethergrim (16 page)

Edmund felt a cold hand on his heart. “I just want to find my brother.”

“Do not hope much.” Lord Aelfric spurred his horse around Edmund and off down the road.

Chapter
16

J
ohn Marshal sat some time in silence, seeming to sink as the sun rose outside. He went so long without speaking that when he started again, Katherine was halfway through making their breakfast. She turned to listen, still swirling a spoon through what was shaping up to be a rather bad pot of porridge. The look on his face tore at her, worked the void in the pit of her stomach yet wider.

“Vithric seemed to know which way to go, more or less, though it was still more than a week before we reached our goal.” John ran his fingers across his brow. “It grew cold and began to snow on us as we went on, far deeper into the Girth than we ever had gone before. We took a few wrong turns, which gave us some days of low spirits and argument. The mountains were quiet, very quiet. There was no sign of bolgug or shrike, no ambushes at our camps. There were precious few animals of any sort up there—all eaten or driven off, I would think—so what struck me most on those days of travel was the emptiness and silence of the land. It seemed to come down on us, somehow, and smother all talk, all the merriment and jest that soldiers use to keep up their spirits on the march. I would be eating the evening meal and suddenly realize I had not spoken a word all day, and neither had anyone else. Silence turns your thoughts down strange roads. A shadow fell over us all, and it began to guide our thoughts and deeds though none spoke of it. We were in the heartland of our enemy, and we knew we would not pass unchallenged, yet nothing happened, day after day. We marched longer, slept less, and guarded ourselves with ever greater vigilance without saying why. The lack of hindrance seemed to make Vithric all the more worried, and though he was no mountaineer himself, he tried to urge us on to even greater haste. I didn’t want to ask what he feared, and I doubt he would have told me. He wouldn’t have wanted it to get out to the men.

“At last, late one afternoon, we came up through a shallow pass to find a great half-crumbled tower of the same fashion as the others we had seen. We found more glyphs and symbols carved upon its walls. Vithric grew excited when he saw them—he told us we must be very close to the lair.

“We climbed the pass toward the tower as the sun set before us, and looked out into the valley on the other side. There we saw the host of the Nethergrim, and many of the men cast themselves to the ground in terror.”

Katherine’s father looked around the room as though he saw something other than the furnishings of his house. “In the gray of twilight great shadows moved, some seeming to grow and shrink with the moment. If I told you that we saw a valley filled with nightmares, I would not be far wrong. Shapes both ponderous and lithe moved below us, each with its own gait, all terrible to behold. We came to know that we had until then met but skirmishers, the lowest orders of the forces arrayed against us. Here stood the core. None were arrayed as soldiers, for these were not men. The skin of a stonewight makes a crumbling, scraping noise as it moves about. It is an awful sound, like a fortress falling to pieces, stones cracking and sliding from the thing only to be absorbed back into its feet and remade by the moment. We could smell the swamp stench of dozens of boggans, see the flitting flash of a score of shrikes, hear the dry cracks of a swarm of thornbeasts writhing as one mass. The glare of the firesprites lit the ground red in places. Never have I seen a piece of land so accursed; the grass was torn and burnt, and the river that ran south out of the valley hissed and steamed. I do not know if such creatures need food or rest, but though they seemed to have been in that valley long enough to ruin it utterly, they did not seem to be encamped. No, they were merely gathered before the mountain at the valley’s head, circling its foothills, waiting. Their master was about to rise. No one needed Vithric to say it.

“Tristan pulled us back from the edge and behind the wall of the tower. We knew that our deaths lay in that valley—I freely admit my only thoughts at that moment were of escaping before we were detected by what we had seen below. Strange it may seem to you, but as I stumbled into cover and looked at my panicking comrades, I had the sudden wish for a leg of mutton in verjuice and mustard. I don’t know why: perhaps I thought I’d never had quite enough of them, and thought that now I never would. I suppose I was trying to convince myself of all the things it was worth running for.

“Tristan addressed us there, beside the ruins of the tower. I don’t remember exactly what he said—the words were not as important as the way he said them. He told us that what we saw in that valley would soon run riot over all we held dear if we faltered. He said there was no time left to prepare, for the Nethergrim would soon rise, and then it would be too late to fight or to run. Everyone, everything we loved was on the hazard that night, but still he gave a choice. He would not fight beside the unwilling; he let those men who could not stomach what was to come go free. Five turned and left us then.”

“I didn’t know that.” Katherine brought her porridge to the table. “I would have thought I’d have heard of them.”

Her father shrugged. “They didn’t make it home. The rest of us waited for full dark, then crept over the pass. The Twins led us on a high, difficult cut across the side of the peak, up and away from where we had seen the creatures, taking cover wherever we could. We hoped to reach the entrance of the lair and slip inside unseen. It was a long, slow trek, every step of it made in fear. We could no longer see the creatures in the valley, save for the firesprites, who seemed to flit and twist about below us in some eerie dance. Even at that distance the sight of them filled us with dread, but so long as they stayed where they were and showed no sign of noticing our passage, we were able to press on. We crept along, each of us doing his utmost to stay silent. Until the night your mother died, those were the longest hours of my life.

“We had gone well over halfway, and had reached the slope before the entrance with no sign of trouble. I began to think our ruse would work—then one of our wide scouts must have run smack into a thornbeast. There came screams and a whipping sound. The firesprites in the valley below turned at once and came our way, along with, I could only guess, every other horrible thing we had seen. Panic very nearly scattered us, but Tristan pulled us back together. He ordered Unwin and the Twins to lead the men at a run up to the lair as he rushed back with Bill and Hubert to hold the flank. We fought a running battle up the slope, with bolgugs and shrikes, the quickest of our enemies, rushing to cut us off from the entrance that we could see looming dark as pitch on the slope before us. By then I had been in a good number of fights, but never had I felt such terror. We were overmatched and we knew it. Men were being picked off left and right as we ran, bowled over and shredded by shrikes or falling with crude spears hurled into their sides. Those of us that remained staggered up into the entrance. I remember one man who had made it up with us looked down to see the wound in his belly and collapsed right there. We knew the slowest of the creatures coming for us would be the worst—the boggans, the thornbeasts and stonewights. And then. And then.”

He looked out across the spreading dawn. The porridge sat untouched. A rooster crowed twice before he spoke again.

“I remember Tristan’s face, the notches on his sword. It was Vithric who reminded us of why we had come. He told us that the Nethergrim was still asleep, that if we could reach its chamber in time, it would take only one man to kill it. He asked for Tristan to come with him, and decided to take one more, just to be sure. He chose me. The rest of the men turned to stand against the horde of creatures coming up the slope, to try to buy us enough time to do what we had come to do. It was a mournful and terrible thing, to leave your dearest friends behind to die for you.”

Katherine reached out for her father’s hand, but he pulled it away.

“I can still see them,” he said. “I see them shadowed against the night sky, the outline of their spears held ready, the Twins perched high upon the rocks, bows drawn side by side upon a field of stars. But the three of us descended into darkness. The central tunnel was very large, and would have led directly to the lair, but a great wall of masonry had been constructed to block it up. The dim sounds of battle began behind us as Tristan and I looked about wildly for a way through. There seemed no way forward, but Vithric rushed to the side wall, spoke one word of command and opened a passage that led into a complex of rooms and tunnels that could have easily housed a hundred men or more. They were built as though tunneling through solid mountain rock was nothing, and I marveled even in my fear as we raced onward. All that was not stone within was rotted to ruin, yet still it was a majestic place, and by the glow of our torches I glimpsed the fullness of the art of those who had built the towers in the mountains. By then the echoes of the battle had died away, though we did not know if that meant it had ended or that we had gone too far down to hear it.

“At every turn Vithric scanned the walls, pausing sometimes for a few moments to collect his thoughts and read what was carved into the stones around him. At last, at one junction, he stopped, turned and pressed his torch into my hand. ‘The Nethergrim is just down these steps and on to the right at the end of the great hall,’ he said to me. ‘There is another way that must be secured. You two go on to the lair and I will meet you. If you reach it ahead of me, do not fear! It is still asleep. Kill it—whatever it is that you see, kill it. Strike for the heart!’

“As he spoke, we felt a thump and a rumble from the direction we had come, and then the sound of pursuit, the long echoes of the caverns drawing all motion into one muddled rush. ‘They’ve broken through,’ I said—I might have screamed it. Vithric ducked into a narrow side passage just big enough for a man to pass through, and disappeared. I ran with Tristan down the stairs, leaping over piles of rusted armor and littered bones, and all the while the echoes of the chase grew louder.

“We emerged into a great empty chamber that ran flat and carven to our right, but ascended sharply up to our left as a rough-hewn tunnel to meet the masonry wall somewhere in the darkness far above. It was clear that the wall was no more, though, for we saw the glow of firesprites descending the passage, and felt the rumble of stonewights following. Tristan and I rushed out into the open. I imagine that the chamber we ran through would have made me stop and gasp in awe at any other time. All I can recall are great vaulted ceilings and pillars shaped into the likenesses of grim and mighty creatures—a boggan, a coiled serpent, a giant with its face inside its belly. At the end of it stood a pair of stone doors as high as a castle wall, carved with designs I could not place. It seemed a hopeless thing, but we put our shoulders to the doors and shoved with all our strength while our doom thundered ever closer behind us. Those hinges must have been very cunningly built, for despite their great size and weight, the doors began to give way, and we slipped between them into the lair.”

John swallowed, and licked dry lips. “And there, laid out upon the bier—there, the Nethergrim.”

“What was it, Papa?” Katherine could not keep the question in. “What did it look like?”

“A beautiful young woman,” he said. “Fast asleep, her belly swollen big with child.”

Katherine would have guessed almost anything before that. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither did I,” said her father. “I have never understood.”

He wept then—the tears sprang out, as though they had been pressed within him for years. “I did not know what to do. I stood dumb—I had steeled myself for anything, any sort of horror from a nightmare, but not for this. The woman—hardly more than a girl—she lay with her hands across her middle, as though to feel or to caress the child within her. Perhaps, had I time to think longer on what to do, I might have stopped, but there was no time to think, for the enemy was upon us. A rumble sounded from the passage behind, the servants of the Nethergrim racing in to kill us before we could kill their master. But then, was their master truly what lay in beauty on the star in the chamber before us? I looked at Tristan—all this passed between us in a moment—and he decided.

“He pushed me into the chamber. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Heed Vithric—it is asleep! He said to kill whatever we saw!’ So I stumbled forward. Tristan turned to defend the doorway, to buy with his life enough time for me to do what we had come to do. I think if I had looked back, I would have seen the full measure of his skill in that moment, but it did not matter. He faced a host, an army, and even his vantage in the doorway would not hold as the stonewights came to batter it open. Just as I reached the dais, I heard the clang of Tristan’s sword as it fell to the floor. I felt despair, for I knew nothing now stood between me and the Nethergrim’s servants. I would not have time to strike before I was cut down.

“Then Vithric came, and at last I knew what a great wizard can do when pushed to the final gasp of desperation. The whole chamber shook, the statues outside shattered and fell, yet still I stood as though I was a statue myself. The sleeping girl before me bore a smile of undying love, a mother’s love. I have never forgotten that smile. Some nights it is all I see.”