Forger of the Runeblade



  Forger of the Runeblade

  Gavin Chappell

  Copyright Gavin Chappell 2011

  BOOK ONE: FAR FROM THE SUN

  PROLOGUE

  The last dwarf fell.

  His body sprawled across the tunnel floor, blood-spattered, unmoving, joining those of his companions who had struggled valiantly but vainly against the advancing tide of attackers. Around him, swart-elf corpses lay savagely entwined with the fallen dwarves, their white-painted faces set in a collective rictus of hate. The stench of blood hung heavy in the rock-walled passage.

  The swart-elf prince’s chest rose and fell wildly as he panted for breath. Blood smeared his blade to the hilt. His slain foes lay piled before him. As the clamour of the slaughter echoed and re-echoed from the stone-vaulted tunnel roof, his weary followers took stock of their wounds and their surroundings. It had been a hard battle, and the position they now commanded had cost them dear. But there was no time for remorse. Prince Helgrim strode forward to address them.

  ‘We are almost there!’ he cried, his alien, feline eyes slits of cold malice. ‘All opposition has been crushed. All our foes are slain!’

  One of his warriors, who had been investigating the corpses, looked up significantly. ‘I cannot find their captain,’ he reported. ‘Tanngrisnir is not here.’

  For a moment, Prince Helgrim was perturbed. His gaze scanned the surrounding tunnel. Then he shook his head.

  ‘We waste time,’ he hissed. ‘Tanngrisnir can do little on his own. We have seized the caves his troops guarded. Now let us exploit the initiative we have gained.’

  He led his followers at a march up the steeply winding tunnel. They turned a corner, and halted. At the far end of the sand-floored passage, the tunnel ended in a narrow, fissure-like archway down which daylight filtered.

  ‘We have reached the surface,’ Prince Helgrim crowed. ‘Hurry!’

  The swart-elves picked their way across the sandy floor and reached the exit. Half-blinded, they gazed out at the trees that grew before the cave, and the plain that stretched beyond them.

  Prince Helgrim made a dramatic gesture. ‘Beyond lies our goal!’ he cried triumphantly.

  1 CHILDHOOD’S END

  Hal Dawson stamped down into the kitchen. His mother looked up, brushing back her greying hair.

  ‘Have you mucked out the stables yet, son?’ she asked, placing two rashers of bacon on a plate beside a potato cake.

  Hal’s mouth watered. ‘Almost, mum,’ he said. She put the plate in front of his father, who was reading the Daily Post after coming back in from the fields. Dawson Senior lowered the paper and frowned at his son.

  ‘“Almost” isn’t good enough,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you before, get your chores done before you come to the breakfast table.’

  A sulky pout on his handsome, open face, Hal stamped back out again.

  He crossed the courtyard towards the stables, pausing by the gate for a longing look across the fields that sloped down towards the estuary. Beyond the river, the blue-grey hills of Wales stood dark and dramatic against the morning sky, seeming to beckon him away from the drudgery of farm life towards some wild and incredible future. Clouds piled upon the peaks like vaster mountains, topped by enchanted castles. He stared dreamily into the distance.

  A raucous croaking woke him from his trance. He glanced up at the beeches by the stables. A large black bird, a rook or a crow, was gazing arrogantly down at him. It spread its wings with pompous dignity, and flapped off, jeering. He grabbed the pitchfork and started mucking out the stables.

  Hal was utterly fed up. Now that he had left school, it seemed that he spent every day slaving on the farm. His dad wanted him to go to agricultural college next year, but he wasn’t looking forward to it. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, but he knew that whatever he ended up doing, it certainly wasn’t going to include farming; not if he had any say in it. Grumpily, he speared the hay with the pitchfork, imagining it was some monstrous opponent. As soon as he had finished to his own satisfaction, he went back into the kitchen.

  ‘How many times! Clean up after mucking out, Hal!’ his mother snapped. Hal cleaned himself hastily in the washhouse, then sat at the table and started shovelling up his breakfast. His father had already finished, and was shrugging into his tattered old coat before he headed out into the shippons. Before he left, he looked at his son.

  ‘And don’t forget to have a look at the fence in Rake Hey field,’ he said. ‘But get that application form filled in first.’

  Hal put down his knife and fork. ‘I’m not going to agricultural college,’ he announced.

  ‘Now, don’t be silly, Hal,’ his mother said. ‘What are you going to do instead? You failed all your GCSEs.’

  ‘Eric’s going to art college,’ Hal replied. ‘So’s Gwen. I want to go with them.’

  His father looked at him levelly. ‘Art college!’ he said. ‘What’s the good of that? You’re going to be a farmer, boy, and don’t you forget it.’

  He strode out. ‘I am not,’ Hal told the retreating back.

  ‘Don’t be cheeky,’ his mother told him, rising to start the washing up.

  Hal shovelled his breakfast up slowly, gazing out of the window across the cluttered farmyard. Early morning birdsong poured in; a liquid, ever-changing song of joy that was at serious odds with his mood. No one understood him. Why should he go to agricultural college, out in the middle of nowhere in Cheshire, just so he could spend the rest of his life working on a farm? He wanted to do something with his life! Sometimes it felt like he was going to burst with boredom and longing.

  He heard a knock at the door. Hal’s mother went to answer it. She returned a moment later.

  ‘It’s that Litefoot boy,’ she said darkly. ‘Tell him you’re too busy to go out today.’

  Hal strode from the kitchen. Eric Litefoot stood on the doorstep, his cunning face alight with mischief.

  ‘Are you coming out, Hal?’ He thrust his hands into his denim jacket and grinned cheekily.

  ‘’Course I am,’ Hal replied, grabbing his coat. ‘Where are we going?’ He heard an angry shout from the farmhouse. ‘Come on!’ he added. ‘Run!’

  They stopped running when they reached the lane leading into the village. Hal glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘She’s not coming after us,’ Eric reassured him. ‘Hey Hal, do you want to go to Royden Park? Gwen texted me before; there’s a fair on, and some guys dressed as Vikings or something.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, okay,’ Hal replied, as they slouched down the lane. The summer sun beamed down on the tarmac, but in the shade of the woods it was cool and dark.

  He’d heard there was going to be a festival to commemorate the local Viking heritage. The Council had got a bee in its bonnet about the Wirral Peninsula being settled by Vikings back in the Dark Ages, and they had decided to celebrate it with a bunch of grown men dressing up as Vikings and fighting mock battles.

  ‘Gwen’s going as well,’ Eric added, ‘and she said to meet her there.’

  Gwen Ramsey was Hal’s other best friend. They were all about the same age, and had known each other for years, getting into endless scrapes together, usually through a combination of Eric’s cunning and mischief and Hal’s madcap spontaneity. Gwen was the sensible one; by their standards, at least. Like Eric, she intended to go to art college.

  They followed a winding trail through musty pinewoods before heading out over the heath of Thurstaston Hill. Soon they reached the grounds of Royden Park, a wild, overgrown area of parkland once owned by a local bigwig, but now open to the public. A large field near the mock-Tudor mansion of Royden Hall was the venue for the Viking festival.

  The two boys came out of the wo
ods into a bustling scene of festivity. Stalls and tents were dotted about, tourists and locals thronged the grass, and one side of the field was taken up by a roped-off area where various groups of Viking re-enactors, dressed in authentic clothes in the style of the tenth century, were preparing to refight the famous battle. The smell of fresh-cut grass made Hal sneeze.

  Hal and Eric listened as a voice over the tannoy told them of how the Viking leader Ingimund fled Dublin after defeat by the Irish and sailed across the sea to Britain, struggling to get a toehold in Wales, then moving on to Wirral. Here he had settled with his people, before besieging Chester and being defeated once more.

  ‘Bit of a wimp, this Ingimund bloke,’ Eric commented. ‘Didn’t he ever win any battles? I thought the Vikings were tough guys.’

  ‘Look,’ Hal said. ‘There’s Gwen!’

  She was standing near the ropes, watching as the re-enactors readied themselves for the fray, their armour glinting in the sunlight; a small, pretty girl with flowing dark hair, wearing a long, baggy pullover and a Gypsy skirt. She turned as they approached, and smiled radiantly.

  ‘Didn’t think you’d show, Hal,’ she greeted him. ‘Eric reckoned you’d be mucking out the stables again.’

  Hal shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Well, I got out of that, didn’t I?’ he said. Gwen always teased him about being under the thumb of his parents. Just because her mum and dad let her get away with anything…

  The re-enactors, divided into two contingents, were glaring at each other across their respective shield-walls, shouting authentic tenth-century insults. The voice on the tannoy informed the gathering crowd that one side represented the Anglo-Saxons who had lived here before the Vikings came, while the other was Ingimund and his Norse warband. The Vikings began banging their swords on their shields.

  ‘I’m bored,’ Eric said. ‘Why’s everyone making such a big deal about the Vikings? You’d think nothing ever happens in this place.’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ Gwen replied. ‘Nothing’s happened here since Ingimund’s day. But you’re right. It brings everyone. Look, it’s even brought the goths out!’

  She pointed towards a group of skinny, black-clad youths lurking beneath the trees on the far side of the battlefield. They were watching the brewing combat with apparent disdain.

  Hal felt a sudden, inexplicable chill down his spine. Sinister as the group looked, he couldn’t account for this feeling of mounting dread. As he eyed them, one caught his gaze; a tall youth with long black hair, who wore black sunglasses, white face-paint and black leather with studded wristbands. The guy looked as if he had escaped from some Norwegian heavy metal band, the kind who spent more time murdering each other than making music. But Hal could not understand why his breath was beginning to catch in his throat, and his heart beat wildly in his ears.

  The youth turned to his fellows, and pointed directly at Hal. They swaggered across the field towards them, brushing past anyone who failed to move out of the way.

  ‘Oh, and I saw Gangrel before,’ Gwen added, gazing towards the re-enactors. ‘He said he had some more of his homebrew, and to meet him at Thor’s Rock this evening.’

  Gangrel was an ageing hippie who lived in a caravan on the edge of the woods. He kept bees and scraped a living selling honey and mead. Partly because their mum and dad had warned them away from him, partly because he was generous with his homebrew, Hal and his friends spent a lot of time in the old man’s company. But Hal didn’t feel interested right now.

  ‘Come on, let’s go somewhere else,’ he blurted suddenly. Gwen gave him a sharp look.

  ‘They’re about to start the battle,’ she complained. ‘Aren’t we going to watch?’

  ‘What’s up, Hal?’ Eric added. ‘You’re as white as a sheet.’

  ‘Come on,’ Hal said thickly. The goths, or whatever they were, were closing in. Hal hurried towards the nearby tents, his two friends following, exchanging worried glances.

  The pursuers followed them through a maze of tents where guy-ropes stretched in all directions to trip the unwary. None of Eric’s or Gwen’s inquiries received an answer from Hal. The black-clad youths still trailed them.

  ‘Are they following us?’ Gwen asked suddenly.

  ‘Quick!’ Hal said suddenly, spotting a tent up ahead with an open flap. Their pursuers were out of sight. ‘In here!’

  As the shout of the embattled re-enactors rang back from the surrounding trees, and the clang and clatter of metal on metal and wood on wood drifted across the field, the three teenagers vanished into the musty gloom of the tent.

  An eerie voice hailed them, as their eyes became accustomed to the darkness. ‘Do you come seeking visions of the future? Cross my palm with silver, if you wish me to tell your fortune.’

  Hal looked round. It was immediately apparent that they had stumbled into a fortune-teller’s tent. Oriental rugs were strewn across the floor, and a woman in gypsy clothes sat at a table, gazing into a crystal ball. Beside it lay a pack of Tarot cards and a bag of runestones. The air was heavy with the smell of joss-sticks.

  ‘Sorry,’ Hal said. ‘We came in here by mistake.’

  ‘Come on, Hal,’ Eric said. ‘What’s up with you? Let’s leave.’

  ‘I want to see the battle,’ Gwen added.

  Hal swallowed. He peeked out through the tent flap, and gulped. Their menacing pursuers were standing less than ten yards away, looking around uncertainly.

  ‘Er, alright,’ Hal said suddenly to the fortune-teller, ignoring his friends. He sat down at the table.

  ‘Cross my palm with silver if you wish to see the future,’ the fortune-teller prompted him. ‘That’s fifty pence, hun.’

  Hal scrabbled in his wallet while his two friends looked on, bewildered by his behaviour. He dropped a fifty pence piece in the fortune teller’s palm.

  She bit it, and tucked it in her waistband. Then she reached for the bag of runestones, and cast them. With her eyes raised towards the tent roof, her ringed fingers scrabbled for three runes, and placed them in a row on the table. She lowered her eyes, and pointed to each rune in turn.

  ‘This, dear, is Isa,’ she said, indicating the first, a single vertical line. ‘It represents the past.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ Hal asked reverently. He didn’t believe this mumbo-jumbo, but the woman’s hushed voice was mesmerising.

  ‘A time of stillness in your life,’ she said. ‘Nothing seems to happen, and yet forces are at work beneath the surface.’

  Hal frowned. That seemed strangely apt. ‘And the second?’ he asked.

  ‘This represents the present,’ the fortune teller replied. ‘It is Ehwo.’

  The rune looked like a letter ‘M’ to Hal, but he said nothing, looking expectantly at the woman while Eric and Gwen fidgeted uncomfortably. ‘It signifies a transformation of the self; new attitudes, a new home, new goals and steady progress in life,’ she told him.

  Hal digested this thoughtfully. A new home? Sounded promising.

  ‘What about the last one?’ he asked, thoroughly absorbed. It resembled a cross, with the horizontal piece at a slight angle.

  ‘This is Naudiz,’ the fortune teller replied. ‘It represents the future. It speaks of sorrow or distress that clouds reality. You will be driven by something from the past. But you will require caution to succeed in any venture.’ She frowned suddenly. ‘Beyond that I can sense…. something… Something evil…’

  ‘Evil?’ Hal gulped. The tent was silent as the fortune-teller stared down.

  ‘Oh, come on, Hal,’ Gwen said impatiently. ‘She’s told you your future. I’m bored. Let’s go somewhere else.’

  Absently, Hal rose. ‘Evil…’ he muttered, and shambled from the tent.

  As the teenagers left, the fortune teller continued to stare in silence at the runes. Suddenly, she shivered.

  ‘We missed the battle, thanks to you,’ Gwen grumbled, as they made their way back through the tents. To Hal’s relief, the black-clad youths had gone, but Gwen and Eric we
re thoroughly disgusted with him.

  ‘Sitting round in some stuffy tent while Mystic Meg talks rubbish,’ Eric grumbled.

  The re-enactors had finished mock-slaughtering each other in the name of heritage; now they were standing in groups as members of the public wandered up to ask idle questions about their armour and weaponry.

  ‘Why hasn’t your helmet got horns on, then?’ Eric demanded of one Viking, a short, weedy man with a receding chin. Hal was sure his friend knew the answer full well, but just wanted to annoy someone.

  ‘Ah, well, son,’ the re-enactor began, ‘it’s a myth, about Vikings having horns. I mean on their helmets. Back in the Bronze Age, however…’

  ‘Can I have a look at your sword?’ Hal interrupted the flow. He had never seen a sword so close up. Unwillingly, the man handed it over.

  ‘Be careful…’ he gulped, as Hal whirled round, pretending to decapitate an opponent. ‘Look, let me show you…’ He gave Hal a series of tips for successful Dark Age swordplay. Hal flourished the weapon dramatically, and the re-enactor cringed.

  Suddenly, Hal stopped dead still, the sword still raised. Across the grass were the black-clad figures he had fled from. Their eyes fixed on him, as he stood there, sword raised.

  ‘So now you think to fight us, boy?’ their leader sneered in a thickly-accented voice. ‘You are green, untried; unfit to fight Helgrim, Prince of Svartaborg! One day we may meet on the field of combat, but what honour would I gain for striking down a defenceless boy? Greater glory would be mine if I slew you as you rode to fulfil your weird!’

  ‘Come again?’ Hal said faintly.

  ‘Prince Helgrim!’ another protested. ‘Show not such scruples now! I say strike him down! He is the one in the Foretelling! Slay him now ere he slays our dark master, and then the forces of chaos will reign supreme!’

  The re-enactor watched the developing drama uncertainly. ‘Look, put the sword down now,’ he said, wagging a finger at Hal. ‘You’ll have someone’s eye out.’ But Hal was deaf to all entreaties as he faced the black-clad figure. ‘I’ll call the police,’ the re-enactor added.

  ‘Hal, what’s going on?’ Gwen asked. ‘Who are these weirdoes?’

  Prince Helgrim turned to her. ‘Ah, and the Foretelling speaks of you, too,’ he said quietly. ‘One day you shall be my queen…’