Forger of the Runeblade Read online

  As Tanngrisnir had urged them, they made the journey in silence, broken only by the distant dripping of water on rock. Impenetrable darkness surrounded them, lit only by the flickering glow of Tanngrisnir’s lantern. The silence settled on them oppressively, like a physical weight, relieved only by the soft squelch of their feet in the sticky clay floor of the tunnel, and by distant, inexplicable echoes. The air grew colder and colder as they penetrated deeper into the rock.

  They found the tunnel blocked by fresh rock falls, and were forced to backtrack a long way. Their brief, whispered, urgent discussions echoed from the surrounding rock, seeming to grow louder and louder in the unnerving, ecclesiastical hush.

  But when the echoes died away, Hal heard what seemed like another echo, bouncing back from unseen chambers within the rock: muffled voices, and the crunch of feet. But Hal could never tell if they were truly echoes or the sounds of pursuit.

  Slowly, another noise made itself heard in the distance, growing louder and louder as the group advanced through the crazily spiralling tunnels, indistinct at first, growing steadily more recognisable, until finally, they turned a corner. Tanngrisnir’s lantern illuminated a high-vaulted cavern through which rushed a great volume of roaring water.

  They stood on the banks of an underground river. Hal strained his eyes to see the other bank, but it was futile. He turned to Tanngrisnir. ‘You must have led us the wrong way again!’ he shouted over the roar of the river. ‘We’ll never cross this.’

  The waters swirled on and on through the darkness, glistening in the lantern-light, rushing like a river in spate. Tanngrisnir grinned. ‘Follow me,’ he said briefly, and led them along the bank.

  Rounding a corner, Hal saw the path along the slippery rocks led them to the edge of a shallow bay about fifteen feet across. Lying at anchor, within the sheltering arm of rock that protected the bay from the rushing current beyond, were two boats.

  Hal regarded them dismally. Two cockleshells of wood and hide, like nothing so much as glorified coracles, of the kind he had once seen used on a Welsh river. There was room for them all in the smaller coracle. But did the dwarf really expect them to venture out in it onto the turbulent waters of the subterranean river? He looked at Tanngrisnir in numb horror.

  ‘Aye,’ the dwarf said, in answer to his unspoken question. ‘The next stage of our journey lies down the river.’

  ‘Will this take us to where the dwarves live?’ Gwen asked.

  ‘It will,’ Tanngrisnir replied. ‘There my people eagerly await your foretold arrival.’

  ‘Foretold?’ Gwen said, as they stepped gingerly into one of the boats.

  ‘Tanngrisnir is right,’ Gangrel said. ‘Your coming was spoken of long ago in the Foretelling.’ He picked up an oar and pushing them slowly out towards the edge of the bay. The dwarf did the same on the other side of the boat.

  ‘What foretelling?’ Hal asked.

  ‘The Nornspa, the Foretelling of the Norns,’ Gangrel replied, as they rowed out into the main stream of the river. Tanngrisnir had fixed his lantern to the side of the boat and it shone over them as the boat rushed through the waters.

  When he saw that Hal was unsatisfied with this answer, Gangrel continued. ‘Long, long ago, all that existed was the void of chaos,’ he told them. ‘Ginnungagap is what we call it. Within that void, however, the potentiality of all being existed. Heat came into existence amidst freezing cold, and these two polarities of Fire and Ice formed the first living being, a vast giant named Ymir.’

  Hal, Gwen and Eric exchanged glances. Hal looked up at the cavern roof as it sped past above them. It was an odd place to be listening to another of Gangrel’s wild tales.

  ‘Other beings came into existence; a whole race of giants, both of fire and of ice; but also gods and men. The giants were savage, lawless oppressors like their father Ymir, and the gods - led by their chieftain, Odin - rose up against them. They slew Ymir, and many of the giants drowned in the flood of his icy blood. Then the gods set about constructing the worlds of order from of his remains. But some of the giants escaped to dwell in chaos and darkness at the edge of the cosmos, where they plot ever to destroy the worlds in vengeance, and to restore the elemental turmoil from which they were born.’

  ‘Seems fair enough,’ Eric said. ‘They were here first.’

  Gangrel fixed him with his single eye. ‘If you had known the chaos at the beginning of time,’ he said quietly, ‘you would not speak so. No god or man could survive a universe under the wild dominion of the giants. And yet, we know that one day they will return to destroy the worlds of order. So the Norns foretold in the dawn of time.’

  ‘So where do we come in?’ Hal asked. ‘If the universe is doomed, if these Norns are right; what can we do?’

  Gangrel rowed on. ‘None but the Norns know when the worlds will cease,’ he replied. ‘But doom can be fought. Many times since the morning of the world, the giants have risen up against the gods, seeking to bring the Fire of Muspell to cleanse the worlds of order. But time and again, the gods have defeated them before they could bring about the doom of the gods, and the end of the world in which mortals dwell. And at their sides have fought champions from the world of men. You, Hal, are destined to be one of those champions. So it was decreed, ere the worlds began.’

  Queasily, Hal digested this. ‘Just now I’d be content with getting my hands on those swart-elves,’ he said darkly. ‘Where do they come into this, anyway?’

  ‘I fear that they are in the pay of Muspell, king of the fire giants, last of the three sons of the old giant, Ymir, who still plots the destruction of the worlds. In which case, they seek to slay you in order to hinder your weird…’

  Before Gangrel could say any more, however, Gwen cried out ‘Look!’ Everyone turned to follow her pointing finger.

  Cutting through the waters behind them, coming ever closer by the second, was the boat they had left behind them. Prince Helgrim and his swart-elves stood leering in the bows, illuminated by a large lantern that hung from the stern.

  ‘They’re after us!’ Hal cried. ‘What do we do?’

  Tanngrisnir cursed. ‘We should have staved in the other boat when we had the chance.’ He dropped his paddle and produced his sword.

  ‘They’re gaining on us,’ Eric said. The larger boat was coming ever closer, with four swart-elves paddling rapidly on either side. Gangrel had also stopped paddling, and was standing in the prow, searching the waters before them.

  ‘Our destination lies ahead,’ he cried suddenly. Hal turned to see the waters before them bubbling and seething, and a whirlpool spinning in their midst. He gave Gangrel an uncomprehending stare. The current was dragging the boat towards the whirlpool!

  ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted, seizing Tanngrisnir’s fallen paddle and struggling vainly to paddle away from the inexorable current. Eric grabbed the other paddle from Gangrel’s hands and copied Hal. But it was useless.

  ‘They’ve almost reached us!’ Gwen cried.

  Hal glanced over his shoulder. Equally, under the pull of the whirlpool, the larger vessel had come practically up against them. Swart-elves were preparing to board. Tanngrisnir brandished his sword, Helbrand.

  ‘Vengeance!’ he roared. ‘For all my kinsfolk!’

  Three swart-elves jumped over the rapidly narrowing gap between the two speeding boats, landing with a thump on the hide and wicker deck. Tanngrisnir hacked at them with Helbrand. A swart-elf thrust at the dwarf. Gwen threw herself at the attacker, knocking him overboard. She seized his fallen sword but before she could move, the remaining swart-elves grabbed her. The weapon dropped from her nerveless grasp.

  Hal dropped the paddle and grabbed for the sword, just as Tanngrisnir staggered back. The dwarf’s head slammed into Hal’s stomach, winding him.

  Gangrel tried to stop the swart-elves, but before he could reach them across the pitching deck, they flung Gwen’s struggling body across the narrow gap. She landed with a thud in the swart-elves’ vessel. Prince
Helgrim seized her.

  ‘Gwen!’ Hal sobbed. He scrambled up again and grabbed the sword. For a moment, his eyes met Prince Helgrim’s across the rushing flood, and naked hatred was in his glare. Then he flung himself towards the two remaining swart-elves.

  ‘Careful!’ Eric shouted, who was still vainly paddling. As Hal launched his attack on the swart-elves, he stumbled and pitched forward. The boat capsized, flinging everyone into the freezing waters.

  Gwen watched in horror from the deck of the other boat as her companions vanished into the seething waters. She caught a last glimpse of Hal’s pale face; then nothing remained but the fragile shell of the boat, bobbing in the water.

  A hand came down on her shoulder. She turned.

  Prince Helgrim looked down at her. He took off his sunglasses to reveal two slitted, catlike eyes. ‘At last we are alone, my dear,’ he said, and smiled.

  His warriors paddled on towards the swirling maelstrom.

  * * * * *

  Still clutching the swart-elf sword, Hal plunged into the roaring, silent, icy depths. Soon blackness seeped up around him. The current seized him in an inexorable grip, and pulled him down, down, down…

  Mercifully, he blacked out.

  * * * * *

  He awoke in freezing darkness.

  His body ached and throbbed. He felt as if he had beaten up by an expert. Around him, he could hear the slightest lapping of water. He seemed to be lying on hard yet strangely spongy rock. Above him, he could see nothing but darkness. But not the dank, stuffy darkness of a cave; it was more like the deep black of an unclouded night sky. Yet he could see no stars.

  Weakly, he tried to move. His clothes were sodden with water, and hung heavily on him; those that remained. They hung from his body in rags. He shivered.

  Slowly, he manoeuvred himself into a sitting position. A bleached white, stony beach reeled on either side of him. The still waters of a dark and silent ocean stretched before him. The air was icy cold. He could see no light other than an unhealthy phosphorescent glow that emanated from the pale rocks beneath him; he saw no moon, no stars.

  The sky above him was blank.

  4 CORPSE STRAND

  Hal rose to his feet, unsteady on aching limbs. Where was he?

  Turning round, he saw that the beach consisted of thousands of rounded, football-sized rocks, bleached white by the water, scattered with driftwood. Towering above the strand was a vast, dark cliff, black against the starless sky. An awful smell of rot hung in the still air.

  Turning slowly, he took in the surrounding scene.

  He cocked his head. The beach lay in silence, hardly broken even by the gentle lap of waves on the stony shore. Along its length mysterious dark shapes were visible, bobbing in the surf a few yards out. They looked like floating corpses. Hal shuddered at the notion.

  As he turned towards the cliff again, the round spongy rock beneath his foot twisted loose and he staggered. Cursing, he glanced down, and gasped.

  The “rock” had rolled over. A fleshless face leered up at him. He gazed down in horror at the skull he had disturbed. Overcome by morbid curiosity, he rolled over another stone, to see that this was a skull, too. And another. And another… and another.

  He was standing on a shore of human skulls that disappeared beneath the slimy surface of the ocean.

  Further examination showed that the “driftwood” was a tangled tideline of bones: femurs, backbones, ribcages... Death and darkness surrounded him.

  The horror of it all rolled over him like a wave, and he fell to the grisly ground.

  But where was he?

  His last memories were of the whirlpool sucking him down into the roaring depths of the underground river. Painful recollections bobbed back into his confused consciousness. The capsizing of their boat… Gwen’s capture by the swart-elves…

  The death of his parents.

  He sobbed hopelessly to himself, and the pitiless cliffs reared above him. The empty eyes of a thousand thousand skulls blindly watched him in his grief.

  Images of the world he had lost swam sickeningly through his mind. The farm… Royden Park… His friends.

  Where were they now? Eric; drowned. Gangrel; drowned. Gwen; taken captive by the inhuman monsters who had murdered his parents.

  Silently, lying motionless on that strand of death, Hal swore vengeance. If ever the chance came, he would avenge himself upon Prince Helgrim.

  But he would need courage.

  His eyes dry, Hal rose again.

  Where would he go? In this bitter, inhospitable, morbid land he could hope for no comfort, no aid. Was this the world of the swart-elves? Or was it some other realm, more remote and evil? He could see no choice. He must find the swart-elves, and take his revenge. First, he must survive. And he would need a weapon.

  He started walking up the beach. The air was bitterly cold, and he shivered as he moved. He needed fire. But where would he find it, in this empty land of the dead? He eyed the towering cliffs. Maybe he should look for some way off this coast.

  As he headed towards the cliffs, his foot caught something that slithered with a metallic sound across the skulls. He bent down, and saw, in the eerie witchfire that illumined the beach, the glint of metal. It was a sword!

  He recognised it as the swart-elf sword he had seized during the fight in the boat. Wonder gripped him, and he stared at the blade, breathless. He remembered still holding it as the current pulled him down into the depths of the river… Had he held it so long, so far?

  But how far had he come?

  For a long time, he gazed out across the dark ocean.

  Despite the starless darkness, he was sure now that he was above ground. Somehow, he had returned to the surface. The air was too crisp for an unventilated, subterranean cavern. He must have come a long way.

  Yet he had held onto the sword all that time.

  He sneezed. He seemed to be developing a cold. Time to keep moving. He began searching for a path up the dark cliffs.

  Half an hour later, he scrambled up onto the headland above. The winds were bitter here, howling like tormented souls above the silent ocean. He stood upon the cliff and looked inland, at the vast structure that rose fifty yards away.

  It was a vast, gable-roofed hall, its timbers black with age, whitened here and there by sleet. Pale, unearthly light glowed from within, and with it came a sulphurous stench, mingled with a strange, musty smell that Hal associated with the reptile house in Chester zoo. Faintly, above the whistle and howl of the icy wind, Hal heard cries of lamentation.

  He paused in indecision. He had been looking for signs of habitation, somewhere to stay the night, but he was tempted to look elsewhere. This dismal hall, with its eerie glow, its foul stink and mournful cries was hardly the ideal venue. He shrugged, and made his way across the twisted rocks towards the hall.

  As he came closer, he heard a steady trudge of many footsteps from the far end of the hall. Looking in that direction, he gasped to see a line of dark figures moving silently down the rocky slope beyond, towards the gaping mouth that was the hall entrance.

  The silence of the figures made him wary. He made his way along the side of the hall until he was close enough to see them clearly.

  Each one had a human face. This came as a relief; he had been expecting swart-elves. But each face was as blank as the skulls that lined the beach: cold, pale as death, vanishing into shadow as they approached the entrance of the hall. Men, women; many old, but some young. Some of the silent walkers were children.

  Then two familiar faces swam up out of the gloom, and Hal gasped. Hope blossomed, but quickly withered as their shapes passed silently, heedlessly. It was impossible. They couldn’t still be alive, not after what had happened!

  He moved to speak, but something stopped him, an up-welling of horror that made him turn and run.

  As he sprinted back towards the cliff, he heard a slithering sound from nearby, as of vast scales scraping against naked rock. Peering into the murk, he see
med to discern a long, thin shape slipping towards him. Hurriedly, he scrambled back down the cliff. As he reached the shingle of bleached bone, he looked back up.

  A hissing, wedge-shaped head thrust out from the cliff on a long, mobile neck, curling and writhing above him. A forked tongue tasted the chill air. Hal placed his hand on the sword that he had hung from his belt, and wished he knew how to wield it. With a flick, the giant reptilian head jerked back out of sight.

  Sunk in gloom, Hal trudged up the strand.

  To his right, the waters of the ocean stretched out into darkness. It was impossible to see where water met sky; each was empty and black, and the line of the horizon was invisible. It was as if the strand gave on to the wastes of intergalactic space. The bitter cold was like the chill of space, too. Dimly, he remembered what Gangrel had said about fire and ice being the two primal forces of the universe.

  He halted, cocking his head. Had he heard the slightest slither from the cliffs to his left? A dry, scaly noise; reptilian flesh meeting grisly shingle. Hal drew his sword and peered vainly at the blackness of the cliff.

  Would the sun never rise? Surely, this long night would end. Or did this world - wherever it was - hang in eternal darkness? He was beginning to suspect that he had somehow been transported to another planet, a darker, colder world.

  The sound did not repeat itself. Without lowering his blade, Hal made his way along the strand. To his right, dark shapes bobbed in the surf. The surf cast one cast up onto the beach. Upon investigation, Hal discovered that it was a lifeless corpse.

  Again, he heard a slithering sound from the bony beach behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, Hal saw with horror a familiar serpentine form slipping silently down the strand behind him, pouring across the skulls like a river of molten silver. It was no more than twenty yards away.

  Hal took to his heels.

  He fled round a headland. A large, dark-walled bay open up ahead. To his delight, he saw the distant glimmer of flames beneath the walls of the cliff. But behind him, the great serpent slithered rapidly, faster and faster now, like a rock python pursuing a frightened rabbit. Hal ran on.