30. Restless Dead

“Though for the Moons passed we had barely wandered beyond a few restricted caverns, Magar has begun to insist that we visit the settlement of Grorgin.

Guarded by two stocky twins with block heads and big fists, we must appear quite peculiar as we wander through the bone and filth strewn streets.

There are those that look at myself and Magar, eyes wide and features drawn, as if we would serve as an able meal. But so far our guardians have afforded us peaceful travels.

Today, that changed.

We arrived outside a compound of scrawny, clawed goblins who refused to let us in let alone to speak with their leader, Chief Halar.

Magar explained to me that Halar is a rival leader who is openly refusing the rule of Zalak. And that, since he refuses to negotiate, Halar must now be slain.

The chosen assassin? A withered old shaman.

‘You are immortal, after all,’ the younger shaman had said.”

Hjorvarth swayed in his seat. He blinked, remembered and righted himself, then rubbed at his aching eyes.

Raucous laughter rang out above a clamour of a hundred conversations, each vying to be louder than the other.

Hjorvarth realised, by the mundane wood and wolf banners, that he was in Gudmund’s Hall. He sat along a bench that he thought destroyed, along with men and women that shared the same fate.

Chief Gudmund’s chair lay empty, so far away that he could barely see it.

“Hjorvarth?”

Hjorvarth vaguely recognized the man sitting across from him. A handsome man with curly hair and moss-green eyes, a man almost as tall and as broad as Hjorvarth. A man that grinned easily, creasing smooth cheeks. “Where am I?”

“Gudmund’s Hall.”

“Perhaps,” Hjorvarth admitted, his thoughts clouded. “But the place seems far larger than I recall.”

He turned to survey the place and those standing in gathering—talking and drinking, sharing secrets or shouting boasts—seemed to thin and thicken, seemed to scatter and cluster as the walls grew farther or closer. The hall seemed to stretch along the length as well, adding new members to an endless bench, adding more banners to the candle-lit rafters. Yet Gudmund’s chair remained ever at the limits of his vision.

“And there is no door.”

“Door?” The man chuckled, glancing at the table. Hjorvarth followed his gaze to see a plate stacked with gravied meats. Steam rose up from golden bread to blind his eyes. “Why would you ever want to leave?”

“Who are you?” Hjorvarth demanded.

“A jest?” The man frowned. “It’s me, Grettir. Less the scars and the hair.”

“A man cannot shave away his scars. You are not Grettir. This place is a falsity. And as to whether anyone would want to leave, you should voice the question to Gudmund.”

“Gudmund isn’t finished yet.”

Hjorvarth turned to see Ralf seated at his right, face bruised and bleeding then healed and gleaming. He blinked and the stout man appeared chubby and ruddy-cheeked as he ever had. “For what?”

“He isn’t finished,” Arnor echoed at Hjorvarth’s left.

“The drowned men come.”

Hjorvarth glanced up to see the Grettir he knew, scarred and hirsute and savage. He wore muddied armour and had grip on the broken haft of an axe. “I am but a moment away from—”

Wood shook and shuddered, hissing dust, as if struck by a hammer blow.

Hjorvarth turned now the sound both repeated and echoed. The ornate doors of the Hall were being broken open. All of the cheerful men and women had been replaced by grim-faced warriors in battered armament. “I begin to think this is an odd feast.”

Silence descended on the hall, broken only by a hundred footfalls as the gathered folk drew closer to the splintered door, which then swung soundlessly inward.

A swollen host in sodden clothing, flesh both blue and glistening, stood gathered outside a town that was little more than the rotting wood of broken homes and the endless surround of tall walls.

“What business?” Grettir demanded.

Brolli trod onto the floorboards, water trickling down and mingling with dust. “I’ve come for the boy.”

A lithe man stepped forward, sword gleaming at his belt, red leather almost a match for his striking ginger hair. “He is not yours to take.”

Brolli’s smile was broad. “You can’t take what’s already yours.”

The two men drew sword. They all drew swords. Hundreds of footsteps scuffed mud and hammered floorboards.

Hjorvarth realised he had no weapon of his own. He stepped forward, slowed by a weight on his arm. He then remembered his shield, offering more pain than protection.

He was on his knees, on his back. Shivering, burning, and aching.

A cold silence greeted his ringing ears. He could only see out one eye, to a darkness that seemed more blue than black. There was a kobold knelt over him, a dead and broken thing that then toppled.

Hjorvarth tried to think, struggled not to vomit, but he could only concentrate on the throbbing agony of his forearm, as if all the flesh had been scoured by flames.

He vaguely caught the scent of cooked meat in the air, tainted by sweat and piss and shit. He managed to turn his head, and make a poor effort at emptying a stomach filled more with fear than food. “Russ…? Sam…?”

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He had the vague thought that his old friend had been here. He could still hear the echo of his mad wailing.

Hjorvarth wondered what had so troubled him, but he had no time to ponder it further. He needed to rise, to stand, to search, to fight. He needed to find Sam and return to save Dan. Then he could rest. Then he could lay down and waste time while others suffered.

Hjorvarth grew close to terrified now he tried to move.

Pain had seeped into every muscle. Agony lanced through his bruised frame like a spiderweb. Yet he managed the act, to rise, struggled not to fall. He frowned down at the red snake of hair lying in a shallow grave.

He pawed at his own neck and grunted in surprise, deciding that it would be best not questioning how it was he came to lay there and how it was he came to lose his braid.

He ventured a touch of the rest of his head, pulling his fingers away when he felt the coarse bristles of scorched hair. He brushed a knuckle against the blisters of burning cheeks. A certainty of dread shrouded him like an ice cold night. “I live on borrowed time,” he realised. “Yet my hearts beats, and I am living, and I am in pain. So I cannot be a risen corpse, or an unchained spirit, or a vengeful draugr. I must simply be stubborn.”

Hjorvarth was further confused by the two kobold corpses lying near his grave, as if they had crawled out from their own mounds to bring him an end. He made a slow and painful effort of burying them both back in the places Russ had chosen.

He wasn’t certain which tunnel led which way, but one was blackened as if by an eruption of fire and the other appeared untouched. He was too disorientated and fevered to notice the footprints trekked across the earth, so he ripped a pair of shining stones from the wall and followed the path that he hoped didn’t lead to fire.

The hours passed like seconds or the seconds passed like hours.

Hjorvarth stumbled forward all the same.

He expected that he would collapse, but each struggling step renewed his vigor instead. He was almost walking at a straight and steady pace when he came across a broken kobold, blown straight into the cavern wall, crushed into the dirt and stone to form a bloody crater.

He found more and more, each body shredded or broken, dead gazes missing or glistening with eerie blue light. He had passed nearly two scores, alone or in groups, before he reached a kobold in a black cloak, stabbed many times over, bloodied claws clutching to a metal pipe.

Hjorvarth crossed into a wider cavern, furnished by a stone marker post.

The way directly ahead looked to have been blocked by a wall of armoured kobolds. Rent limbs and remnants flesh lay in a macabre heap of ruined bodies and grimy blood. Mail links had been blasted apart, scattered across the cavern with shattered wood and tattered cloth, broken teeth and small bones.

Hjorvarth thought the sight odd, not by merit of ruin or violence, but because the blast seemed to have erupted from within their ranks.

A single set of footprints had tracked through the blood, leading on to a long tunnel.

Hjorvarth decided to follow the same path, making his own red marks. He kept forward, forcing the gloom back with blue, until the path forked. An armoured kobold seemed to stand guard at the earthen divide, leaning heavy on a spear, but a hole had been torn from its chest and dried blood pooled at clawed feet.

Hjorvarth considered taking the spear, but thought better of it, knowing well enough that stealing a dead warrior’s weapon was an easy way to risk the wrath of a draugr.

He could see no difference between the tunnels now offered, but the kobold seemed to look to the left, so he headed in that direction.

Hjorvarth heard the shrill notes of kobold conversation soon after and regretted not taking a weapon. He tested his limbs and was answered with the pain of raw flesh. He winced but was convinced he still had one fight left in him.

He hoped he would be able to find the prisoners before it ever came to that.

“Goblin.”

Hjorvarth turned to the hissed whisper.

A kobold stood behind him, black cloak torn and tattered, barely covering hairless flesh that had been scraped, slashed, and bruised. A metal pipe was raised, aimed, a stone poised above it. “I should have buried you.”

“Russ…?”

Russ sparked the stone against the pipe.

“Are you mad?” Hjorvarth growled. “Stop or I will throw my own stone at your head.”

Russ paused mid-strike. “You speak words as if living, goblin.”

“I am not a goblin.”

“You were dead. I saw you die.”

“There may be some truth in that,” Hjorvarth admitted. “I expect it is a wrong soon to be righted. So there is little need for the act to be done by your own hand.”

Russ barely lowered his pipe. “I freed the man named Sam. Did he raise you from the grave?”

“Truly?” Hjorvarth asked, his haggard voice lifted slightly by doubtful happiness. “I thought I had heard his—” He frowned. “He must have thought me dead.”

“You were dead,” Russ repeated.

“Does the path they follow lead straight?”

“It takes them to the mountains where you looked upon the goblin lands.”

Hjorvarth’s nod was reluctant. “Then my quest is at an end.”

“Mine is not,” Russ answered. “By my own mind, yours seems ill completed as well. Does the pink goblin not await rescue in Rubinold’s holdings? Have your bargaining roots not fled from grasp?”

“Then I will aid you in defeating Zelerath and you will arrange the trade on my behalf.”

Russ’ laugh was pained. “I am bleeding, goblin. I have powder for only one shot.”

“It would be a waste to use it on a man who is already dead, then.”

“Goblins do not die, Isleif’s son. They come again and again with the same snarling faces.” Russ waved him forward. “Yet there is wisdom in your words. We shall proceed until an end is brought to us both.”

“That suits me well enough,” Hjorvarth said, made tired by speaking.

He trudged forward in silence until they reached a wider cavern, overlooked by stone rises and rocky plateaus. Blue light suffused the darkness around them, enveloping man and kobold in a luminous sphere.

Russ walked in Hjorvarth’s shadow.

He kept step for a few moments before mellow light flickered to life.

Hjorvarth realised that he had stumbled into a surround of scores of kobolds, most gleaming in chain and wielding spears, others cloaked and holding metal pipes. The warriors had squat candles resting atop their helmets, dozens of delicate flames that seemed to serve as a marker of life.

“In the name of Queen—”

“I am a goblin!” Hjorvarth declared as loudly as he could. “I bring the prisoner, Russ, servant of King Rubinold. I come to make peace between Queen Zelerath and the Small King. I must be taken to an audience as soon as able.”

The cloaked pipers held their sparking stones as if uncertain. The armoured guards shared glances and squinted at one another in confusion. A kobold, larger than the rest, clothed in blue robes, stepped forward to the plateau’s edge at Hjorvarth’s left. “If that is the truth, goblin. Why does your prisoner hold a pipe?”

“He cannot drop it.”

The kobold scowled. “For what reason?”

“I did not ask.”

“Ah… hah.” The kobold bared sharp teeth. “Well, goblin, your prisoner has lied to you. I would—”

Hjorvarth lurched around, skin splitting with the effort. He lifted Russ from the floor and the metal pipe slipped from grip. “It was a lie!” He turned back to the lead kobold, still holding Russ aloft. “Is the Queen Zelerath as untrustworthy? I came to speak honest truths. If she cannot be trusted, I must travel instead to the Hallowed.”

Whispers of fright and disgust rippled through those gathered.

The lead kobold’s smile slipped. “There is no need for that, goblin. I will take you to our queen.”

Candles went out in unison, smoke twisting up as blue light claimed the cavern.

Hjorvarth set Russ back on the ground while armoured and cloaked kobolds approached on all sides. “You have my honest thanks, Joyto,” he whispered.

Russ sneered up at the burnt man. “Death would have been better, goblin.”