Broken Stone 02 - Warlock's Sun Rising Read online

  WARLOCK'S SUN RISING

  Book Two of the Broken Stone Chronicle

  DAMIEN BLACK

  Copyright @ 2017 Damien Black

  Damien Black has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without prior permission of the author.

  All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Typesetting and e-book conversion by BookCoverCafe.com

  ISBN:

  978-0-9954928-3-7 [print]

  978-0-9954928-4-4 [mobi]

  978-0-9954928-5-1 [ePub]

  In loving memory of my father, who sought the Judgment of Azrael ten years ago

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER I. A New Alliance

  CHAPTER II. A Foreshadowing Of Things To Come

  CHAPTER III. At The Court Of Fools

  CHAPTER IV. The Burned Witch’s Lair

  CHAPTER V. Of Troubled Souls

  CHAPTER VI. A Chase Renewed

  CHAPTER VII. Into the Forest

  CHAPTER VIII. Under Eaves Again

  CHAPTER IX. After The Slaughter

  CHAPTER X. Devils With White Faces

  CHAPTER XI. An Awkward Homecoming

  CHAPTER XII. A Renewed Pursuit

  CHAPTER XIII. Ichor And Blood

  CHAPTER XIV. The Witch Queen’s Bower

  CHAPTER XV. A Soul Sold

  CHAPTER XVI. Of Beasts and Men

  CHAPTER XVII. Of Love and Hate

  CHAPTER XVIII. The Witch Hunter’s Quarry

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER I. An Audience With Royalty

  CHAPTER II. The Shield Queen’s Hall

  CHAPTER III. Spared and Ensnared

  CHAPTER IV. A Dream Shattered

  CHAPTER V. Of Sour Times

  CHAPTER VI. A Tryst For New Lovers

  CHAPTER VII. The Warband Musters

  CHAPTER VIII. A Palace Coup

  CHAPTER IX. The Trail Grows Cold

  CHAPTER X. In Search of Prey

  CHAPTER XI. Throwing Down the Gauntlet

  CHAPTER XII. When Brave Knights Tilt

  CHAPTER XIII. Blood on the Horizon

  CHAPTER XIV. Of Duelling Hearts

  CHAPTER XV. A State Funeral

  CHAPTER XVI. When Houses Clash

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER I. The Warrior-King’s Passing

  CHAPTER II. An Invasion Stalled

  CHAPTER III. Of Birds and Men

  CHAPTER IV. A Road Rejoined

  CHAPTER V. A Brawl Beneath The Rafters

  CHAPTER VI. A City Under Siege

  CHAPTER VII. Where Dead Kings Walk

  CHAPTER VIII. A Spell Broken

  CHAPTER IX. Unwelcome Tidings

  CHAPTER X. A Regency Disputed

  CHAPTER XI. In Search Of Succour

  CHAPTER XII. Another Close Shave

  CHAPTER XIII. A Wedding Of Reavers

  CHAPTER XIV. A Hard Road For Sick Wayfarers

  CHAPTER XV. A Throne Secured

  CHAPTER XVI. The Final Stretch

  GLOSSARY OF NAMES

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER I

  A New Alliance

  The grizzled thegn approached the tree stump and stared at its shorn bloody top. With the resignation of a warrior about to meet the gods, he kneeled in the coarse sedge and bowed his head. The youth next to him raised his axe and placed its dripping blade across the back of his neck. The fighters around them clashed weapons against shields one last time, their bloodthirsty yells mingling with the crackling of fires as the palisade burned.

  Gripping the axe more tightly, the lordling shouted above the din, his voice cutting through the roaring of throats and the sound of steel hitting oak.

  ‘Thegn Hardrada, you are found wanting in the eyes of Tyrnor,’ he cried. ‘Your warriors we have gifted with the sleep of the sword – now it is your turn to taste the blood ember! Have you anything to say?’

  Hardrada did not reply. With a curt nod, his executioner raised the axe and brought it down. He felt a thrill shoot through his wiry frame as the thegn’s head shot free of its body, borne on a tide of gore. As the headless corpse slumped to the ground besides the others, he turned to bellow at his cheering seacarls: ‘All hail Guldebrand, new Ice Thegn of the lands of Jótlund, crowned in blood before the Great Reaver!’

  ‘All hail!’ thundered the five-hundred strong host clustered on the hill. Most of the warriors who had followed Guldebrand across the Hrungnir River into his rival’s lands were more seasoned than him. But today he had shown his leidang that he was no spoilt princeling. He had done his share of killing in battle, and meted out a warrior’s death to the surviving losers.

  ‘Now Middangeard stands empty of Hardrada and his last loyal seacarls,’ he said, addressing Walmond, his under-thegn. ‘What of his family?’

  Walmond pointed with his axe towards the burning outhouses lying on the rugged plains around the hillock. ‘We found them in yonder granary stores,’ he said. ‘Being hidden by slaves amidst the provender. We brought them up to the hall while you were finishing the executions.’

  Walmond, his right-hand man: twice his age and size, but loyal to a fault. He would reap the reward of that loyalty, now he served an ambitious ruler.

  Guldebrand nodded, then raised his voice again so his bloodied seacarls could hear him. ‘We shall not be unmerciful towards Hardrada’s kith and kin – Gunnehilda and her bairns shall sup with us this night! As for the slaves, they shall meet the fate of all bondsmen who dare oppose made fighters. Crucify them.’

  Many of the seacarls grunted in approval. It was well. Guldebrand had been thegn for just half a dozen seasons, but he knew when to be ruthless. A true thegn carved out his reputation on the flesh of corpses made by his own hand. A true thegn must always be feared first – and then respected. He had respected Hardrada, but that hadn’t stopped him taking advantage of his weakened position to raid his lands. Fear kept one’s rivals away: fear and only fear. Respect was for the priests and farseers.

  Guldebrand raised his eyes to the darkening firmament. For one last time he let his sweeping gaze take in the butchered bodies of Hardrada’s leidang scattered about the hill. Beyond them pillars of smoke rose from the burning palisade and town, carving ugly rents against the sky.

  Inhaling deeply, he felt his heart soar as the sound of slave women crying and screaming met his ears. Not all his warriors had stayed to watch the executions. The ravishings had begun.

  Turning to look at the high hall crowning the adjacent hill he gestured towards it. ‘Let us repair inside, and feast and drink! Tjórhorn shall ring with music and laughter one last time before we burn it to the ground!’

  Another cheer. Guldebrand felt his father’s blood coursing through his veins. In a lightning stroke he had doubled his lands, achieving what the old man never had in thirty years. A good effort for someone of sixteen summers.

  A few hours later and Guldebrand was presiding over a debauch. The hall was filled with smoke from the firepits and warriors carousing to the sound of pipe and horn and drum as frightened slaves played for the victors. Tjórhorn was two storeys high, the uppermost housing Hardrada and his family’s private quarters. Shrieks and grunts could be heard from above the crooked rafters of the low c
eiling. Hardrada’s rooms were being used for the ravishings, a normal part of any conquest; victorious seacarls were entitled to use a beaten lord’s slave women for their pleasure. He would have his turn shortly – there were plenty of terrified wenches refilling horns of wine and mead from leather gourds who hadn’t been taken yet.

  But first as ruler of a newly extended principality he had to observe due ceremony, feasting his seacarls while he divided new lands among them.

  Raising a horn to his beardless lips he quaffed another draft. It was fine wine, from Pangonia – Hardrada’s tastes had been good, say what you like about his recklessness in war. Perhaps it was the strong ruby vintage, brought across the Sea of Valhalla, that had impaired the old man’s judgement.

  ‘Those of you who have elected to stay on Hardrada’s lands shall be given a plot equal to twice your former share in Kvenlund,’ he declared after banging down his horn for silence. ‘Your former plots shall be given to those who have chosen to return home. The year-tithe I shall extract from all new domains, in accordance with custom.’

  Another drunken cheer resounded across the reeking hall, briefly drowning out the music and screams from upstairs. Every fighting man present had doubled the extent of his lands. Guldebrand had just done likewise with his income. There was good strong wine from the civilised mainland and meat aplenty. There were comely wenches there for the ravishing.

  What was not to like?

  ‘A toast to our leader, young in years but old of mind and stout of heart like his father,’ bellowed Holgaar Breakshield, getting unsteadily to his feet. ‘A worthy successor to Gunnar Longspear!’ Though shorter than average, Holgaar’s broad shoulders and knotted muscles gave him a fearsome aspect.

  Another cheer; more wine and mead flowed. Guldebrand relaxed back into the high chair as a slave refilled his horn. She wasn’t the best-looking wench, but that didn’t bother him over much. Sometimes it was fun to ravish the ugly ones too, just for the sake of it. He felt a thrill course through his loins as he glanced sidelong at her lumpy curves. The wine was going to his head. Yes, it would be time for a good ravishing right soon. But first he had one more piece of business to attend to…

  Turning to look at the pale-faced noblewoman sat next to him he cracked a smirk. ‘Why Gunnehilda, you’ve barely touched your meat,’ he said affably. ‘And yonder wine-cup looks over full methinks. Has something spoiled your appetite?’

  The seacarls within earshot laughed at the jibe. Without raising her head, the ash blonde widow murmured: ‘I never saw much value in the death-feasting. I would fain rather you left me to tend my grieving children and mourn my husband’s passing in private.’

  ‘Ah, but that is where you and I differ, you see,’ replied Guldebrand, leaning forwards and grinning more broadly. ‘You have no respect for tradition. The customs of the Northlands demand that the vanquished’s kin are feasted by his conquerors, as a sign of magnanimity in victory.’

  Getting to his feet he raised his horn and cried: ‘And I am not magnanimous in victory?’

  ‘JA!!!’ came the chorus of answers. You could count on your seacarls for the desired response when you’d just enriched them.

  From one of the rafters a raven suddenly dislodged itself, flying through the smoke towards the entrance-way. Guldebrand glared blearily after it. Weren’t ravens in victory-time supposed to forebode ill? He pushed the thought from his fevered mind as he turned to address Hardrada’s widow again.

  ‘Your husband, for all his merits, had grown… weak about the head,’ slurred the young thegn. ‘For what kind of idiot would stake two thousand fighting men on a mad adventure, leaving his lands barely defended and ripe for conquest?’

  ‘Perhaps Hardrada was spending too much time betwixt the sheets!’ yelled a seacarl. ‘A man who spends over much seed abed loseth his reason!’

  More laughter. That was an old joke but an enduring one.

  ‘Perhaps,’ laughed Guldebrand. ‘Yet who could blame the old man if so? For is his widow not passing fair?’

  More hoots and jeers cut through the reeking air, made pungent by the crammed bodies of sweating men.

  ‘Have you brought me here to honour me, or humiliate me?’ asked Gunnehilda coldly, still not looking up from her platter. Next to her cowered her two young sons, aged four and six summers apiece. Hardrada had taken wife late.

  The young thegn put a hand to his mouth in mock disbelief. ‘Humiliate you?’ he gasped. ‘Why no, sweet lady, I’ve brought you here to congratulate you – for your newfound freedom from that doting greybeard you called husband. We shall find you a more suitable bedfellow – one who doesn’t throw away his lands to back the losing side in a Northlending civil war!’

  ‘Perhaps Hardrada was not as foolish as you think, Thegn of Kvenlund-Jótlund.’

  The cold voice cut across the din. It was not loud, yet something in its icy timbre was enough to silence the assembled warriors and still the music. Only the crepitant fires and shrieking women upstairs could be heard now.

  ‘Who speaks?’ said Guldebrand, suddenly feeling nervous. Instinctively he raised his hand to the neckline of his byrnie, his fingers groping towards the pomander he wore beneath.

  ‘One who would counsel you, if you have ears to listen.’

  A tall figure made its way between the rudely arrayed tables, the uneven light of the braziers showing naught but cloak and kirtle and walking staff.

  ‘And who might you be?’ queried Guldebrand sharply, a hand straying to the haft of his axe, as he inwardly berated himself for his nervousness. What was there to be nervous about? He was sitting in a hall of victory surrounded by made men at his beck and call. Yet still he felt a slight tenseness; something was pressing at the edge of his psyche. His hand moved from the axe back to the sour-smelling pomander of herbs.

  The stranger had drawn level with his table. All eyes were on him now. Even the sound of rutting upstairs seemed to have abated.

  ‘I was an adviser to the late lord of this hall,’ replied the shadowy figure, drawing a sharp look from Gunnehilda. ‘In fact it was I who counselled Hardrada to throw his lot in with the Northlending rebels on the mainland.’

  ‘You!’ Gunnehilda had risen to her feet, and now stared at the stranger with accusing eyes. ‘You it was who fostered this misfortune, with your silver-tongued guile! You are scarcely more welcome than my husband’s killers, Ragnar of the White Eye.’

  The stranger muttered a word in a foreign tongue. Harsh-sounding and wicked it was; Guldebrand felt a shiver run through him, as though a Gygant had caught him in its frosty glare. The smoke suddenly seemed to congeal and grow thicker; the flames guttered, throwing the hall momentarily into blackness. When the lights flared up again a tall figure in shimmering sea-green robes stood before them. Where a second ago he had clutched an ordinary walking staff, he now held a three-pronged trident fashioned from metal of an alien hue. He stared at Guldebrand with his one good eye.

  ‘Tamer of oceans,’ said Guldebrand cautiously, slowly drawing out the pomander and pressing it to his nostrils. ‘Perhaps I should thank you for leading Hardrada astray. It would have been a hard-fought victory without your help.’

  ‘Or no victory at all come to that,’ replied Ragnar impatiently. ‘I did not come here to bandy words, Guldebrand the Beardless. Expanding your domains was never my original intention.’

  Guldebrand felt his young face flush. He didn’t like hearing his epithet. Was it his fault Longspear had died before he’d been old enough to grow a beard? He had killed made men and ravished their women – surely that made him man enough.

  ‘But expanded them I have,’ he sneered back. ‘In fact I’d say I’ve been rather more successful in battle than you have, ocean-tamer. Radko the Farseer reports many dead berserkers on a foreign field, while the Northlending rebels you supported share the grave with them.’

  ‘Ah, so you still use the services of that hedge wizard?’ Ragnar shot back, his sightless eye catching the light with a
n eerie sheen. ‘How else has my erstwhile apprentice served you?’

  ‘With a charm to ward off your witcheries, my silver-tongued friend,’ smirked Guldebrand. ‘So don’t be thinking to subdue me to your will with the sorcerer’s speech, as you did Hardrada.’

  ‘Ah, a pomander of abjuration,’ hissed Ragnar. ‘So my old understudy did learn a few things after all. But you should have no fear – I shall not need the power of Enchantment to convince you to enlist my services. You will quickly see the benefit in allying yourself with me.’

  ‘And why should the Thegn of Kvenlund-Jótlund do that?’ barked Walmond. ‘Given what happened to his predecessor.’

  Holgaar lurched to his feet angrily, pulling his axe free. ‘By your leave, Guldebrand, let me show this apostate priest a steel welcome. He is banished from the Principalities for following the Left-Hand path! I say we send him on his way!’

  A few dozen throats voiced what the men thought of that. Northlanders were more tolerant of sorcerers than the mainlanders with their strange sacrificial peace-god, but practising black magic spelled trouble in most places.

  An impulse seized Guldebrand. ‘You stand accused of demonolatry on my lands, Ragnar of the White Eye,’ he said. ‘How plead you to these charges?’

  Ragnar stared at him inscrutably. Guldebrand couldn’t tell if he was surprised or not. ‘I plead neither guilty nor innocent,’ replied the mage curtly. ‘I have not come here to waste time with legal – ’

  ‘Nonetheless, you do stand on my land,’ persisted Guldebrand. ‘Accused of a capital offence. If you will not plead one way or the other it makes no difference – you still must fight before the gods. In sight of Tyrnor shall your guilt or innocence be determined! Holgaar, as you have levelled the accusation, you shall fight for the prosecution. Clear a space!’

  The hall became a flurry of activity. Seacarls loved watching a fight as much as they relished being in one. Within a few short minutes Guldebrand was presiding over a makeshift circular space between the tables. Holgaar had taken down his broad target shield from the wall to complement his axe. Ragnar had not moved. He stood stock still, facing Guldebrand with the same inscrutable expression on his disfigured face.