The Sorcerer's Vengeance: Book 4 of the Sorcerer's Path (12 page)

“Nor would you have until we opened you up with our axes had you shown yourselves to be aligned with the evil that has befallen this and other lands. It is fortunate that the ragmen attacked you, proving your innocence.”

“You know what those things are? What are they, where did they come from?” Zeb asked anxiously.

Modi stared into the flames of the fire. “We call them ragmen because the bodies look like they were stitched together like rag dolls and brought back to life. Other than that, I don’t know what they are. They are not alive anymore, not in any sense you or I would consider life. As far as where they came from—many were once my people, some from my very own clan. I have looked into the eyes of what was once my own brother before I laid him to rest.”

“How did this happen?” Zeb asked, feeling the remorse that Modi exuded.

“Zeb,” Derran interrupted, “we have one man dead, two wounded, and two missing. One of course was Matt. We all saw that. The other is Ruben. Probably pulled from his pallet during the fight.”

“I doubt that,” Zeb replied. “Knowing Ruben, he crawled out of that tent with a weapon in his hand before it collapsed around his ears and got himself snatched up.”

“He was wounded before?” Modi asked.

Zeb nodded. “Took a swipe to the chest from the ice bear that used to wear that big skin that’s folded up on that sled outside the wall.”

“Your men fought bravely, like real warriors. I would imagine he was taken fighting no matter how dire his injuries.”

“Aye, that’d be Ruben and most any man I brought with me. That’s one of the reasons I chose this lot. They may not all be experienced sailors and they sure wouldn’t fit in at the king’s ball, but by the gods they’ll fight for ten minutes after they should’a fallen just on pure orneriness.”

Modi nodded his appreciation at the Utgardr’s praise of his men. He knew the feeling of leading good warriors into battle as well as anyone and better than most.

“I still don’t understand what’s going on,” Zeb said. “What did you mean they were your people?”

“For many months, Muspellheim, the northern forests, have been plagued with men and women crawling out of their graves. We have had to start burning our dead upon pyres to ensure that they return to stand next to Djev and add their own strength to the shining one’s radiant axe in his battle against his foul sister of darkness.

“At first we thought it was the work of the Nonarun, or that something or someone was interfering with their weavings until the first raids by the walking dead and creatures like you saw tonight began stealing my people away. It was then we realized that a being was using the foulest of necromancies to create the beasts we slew or that ran off with our family, friends, and neighbors. When we began seeing familiar faces amongst the raiders, I decided to take a band of my most trusted and steadfast warriors after them.

“We have been tracking the creatures and battling them for nearly two months now. The men you see before you are just over half the number we started out with and less than a quarter that demanded to accompany us.”

“I don’t quite follow everything you said, Modi,” Zeb broke in. “Who is Djev and the Nonarun and what weaving could possibly have anything to do with these constructs?”

“Djev is the shining one, the one you Utgardr, southerners, call Solarian. The sun is the head of his mighty glowing battleaxe with which he battles his sister Nachtella’s desire for eternal darkness. The Nonarun are the three sisters of fate. Upon their cosmic loom they weave the fate and the lifelines that are attached to every man and woman who walk the world. Even the gods’ own immortal lives are woven upon their loom. It is the three sisters, Urdra, Vervandi, and Skulda that decide the length and complexity of each being’s thread and how it is woven into the fabric of the universe.

 “The not dead are anathema to the Nonarun. All things, except the gods, that have a beginning must have an end to be properly woven into the celestial fabric. When one is created like those we have slaughtered this night, it has tampered with the threads of those men and women and disrupts the weave. My men and I have sworn to not rest until we have ended whoever is responsible for this sacrilege or until we are slain and join them. The question remains, what are you going to do now, knowing what you face?”

Zeb cast his eyes about the fire, looking into the faces of every man present, his own as well as the determined countenances of the Eislanders. “I don’t quite rightly know what to do.”

“It depends on what kind of man you are and the type of men you lead. If you are smart and wise, you will pack your things, return to your ship, and flee this cursed land. But if you are brave to the point of recklessness, honorable to the point of foolishness, and angry to the point of unyielding vengeance then you and your men will take up your weapons and fight, and possibly die, next to mine and purge this vile evil from the land for all time!” Modi declared, his moving speech reaching a defiant shout.

Every man in the camp was shouting oaths of vengeance by the time the northerner’s proclamation reached its crescendo. Zeb saw before him a leader of unparalleled confidence, ability, and charisma and could not help but raise his own cutlass and voice in defiance at whatever evil had defiled the bodies of decent men and women, killed, and kidnapped his own.

“I won’t leave good men the hands of that kind of filth. You can count on me and every able-bodied man I have to chase down whoever is responsible and destroy them.”

Modi clapped Zeb on the shoulder with a huge open hand. “That’s the spirit! I knew there were real men somewhere in the southern lands.”

Few men slept that night, those that did were the envy of those who could not. The Eislanders had the least trouble catching a few hours sleep, having been on the war trail and battling the ragmen for weeks. Zeb cooked up a large portion of the bear meat to break their fast for which the Eislanders were extremely grateful. The big northerners were some of the most fearsome fighters in the land and decent fishermen but generally not that adept at hunting and all of them were underfed.

Bear meat was some of the least desired of meats, and Zeb had no qualms about giving out as much of it or any other food they had. They had salt and pepper in abundance as well; another valuable staple the northmen had run out of some time back. Zeb would have given Modi and his men the finest cuts of veal if he had such for what they had done last night. His men had done well defending themselves against the mindless and enraged creatures but they had been just moments away from being swarmed and would have started losing men quickly without the unexpected aid.

Zeb gathered his men about him as they ate next to their newfound friends and allies. “Brandon, I want you and William to take John back to the ship on one of the sleds. Take a tent, a stove, and as much food as you think you’ll need. Do you think you can do that?”

“Aye Cap’n, but my head’s mostly better now. I can still fight,” Brandon assured Zeb.

“I know ya can, lad, but William’s got that arm in a sling and John ain’t able to walk on his own. You’re the strongest of our walking wounded and I need to know that you’ll get William and John back to the ship and let Balor and the others know what we’ve come up against. You tell him to wait as long as he can but get the
Shark
out of that bay before it freezes solid and crushes her.”

“Aye, sir, that makes sense. Just get yourself and the others back all right?”

“I’ll certainly do my best. As much as I’ve always wished for a second pair of hands at times I ain’t ready to pay this kind of price for em,” Zeb said in disgust as he looked over at one of the dead ragmen.

“Captain Zeb,” Modi rumbled a few paces away. “I would have a word with you if you’ve a moment to spare.”

“Of course, Modi,” Zeb replied as he stepped nearer the big battle jarl. “Is there a problem?”

“A concern. I have wounded who are not able to continue on with us. I have seen far too many of my men die to leave any more behind now.”

“Leave them behind? You have been fighting these things for weeks. Surely you have had wounded before now. What did you do with them?” Zeb asked, afraid to hear the answer.

“Those with injuries that would heal in time were carried on litters or a travois. Those whose wounds would only slow or weaken the party were given a warrior’s death,” Modi answered, stifling the regret in his voice and covering it with pride for the bravery and sacrifice of his men.

Zeb’s face paled at the thought. “What would you have of me, Battle Jarl?”

“First I would have you call me Modi as is fit for one battle jarl to another. Then I would ask your leave to send my men with those returning to your ship where they might be taken care of and recuperate despite their protests to the contrary.”

“Of course,” Zeb replied, shocked that the Jarl thought he even needed to plead for such an accommodation. “If you have at least two men who can walk and help pull the sled they should be able to carry two more but they’ll be just about sitting on each other’s laps.”

“That’s good to hear. I have one that simply cannot walk though he would hop on one leg all the way to wherever we go to do battle if I let him. The other should not walk but I know he will get out of that sled the minute someone’s not looking until he collapses. The other two should have little problem keeping pace.

“One’s arm is near useless and has a deep gash to his ribs. The other has a dent in his skull deep enough I could eat soup out of it. He walks like he’s fine but he can’t remember what he’s doing out in this gods-forsaken land and forgets half of what you tell him a minute later.”

“Aye, I got a good bone cutter on my ship maybe can help him. I had a lad fall from the rigging halfway up the mizzenmast and cracked his skull when he hit the deck. Bones put him to sleep with some concoction he made, opened his scalp, and reset the pieces of his skull as if it was nothin’ but broken arm. The lad smiles a bit lopsided now and I wouldn’t hire him to balance my ledgers but he does all right.”

The big man allowed a small smile to crease his stern face. “Aye, that sounds like a good bet then so long as there’s no sorcery involved. Braken would probably tear that ship apart if he suspected anyone was trying to use witchcraft on him.”

Zeb waved Modi’s fear off. “It’s no witchcraft, I swear. The stuff he uses is made from some kind of swamp weed he boils and runs the fumes through a tube he has the patient breathe deeply from.”

“Dream weed! Our herbalists and healers use it for much the same thing though they have never vaporized it like that. They always boiled it and distilled it into a liquid to drink.”

“Aye, I’ve seen Bones make a bit like that as well but he says having em breath the fumes is better for folks with a bad knock to the head or ain’t conscious to drink it.”

“This has been a very good meeting, Zeb. Tell your man to have your healer teach this method to my men so that they can pass it on to the healers of my village if your healer is willing to part with such valuable knowledge,” Modi intoned seriously.

“Consider it done, friend.”

Zeb got his wounded prepared to travel, as did Modi after a great deal of coercion, arguing, and threats. The two leaders introduced all the men that would be traveling together. Brandon insisted that Zeb take the second tent, arguing that the bearskin was big enough to cover all seven of them in a pinch and that the stove that survived the fire relatively intact would keep them warm until they reached the ship.

Zeb finally relented, bowing to the wounded men’s argument that the ship was no more than three days out while the war party could be gone far longer, especially if they did not get back before the icepack completely closed the bay and trapped the ship and crushed it.

Zeb and Modi’s band watched the seven wounded men head off on their own towards the bay and the relative luxury of the ship before turning and following the tracks left by the fleeing ragmen. True to his word, they saw one of the men stagger out of the sled and begin walking as soon as they were far enough away he could pretend not hear his battle jarl’s command to get back in the sled.

“He got farther than I thought before jumping off,” Modi commented. “I guess we better be on our way too.”

CHAPTER
6

Azerick and Horse headed across the desolate wastes of seemingly lifeless sand and hard baked earth. The Bloodstone Mountains were visible to the north looking like an angry red welt across the horizon. There were no roads leading to Rapture, the sardonically named town where the black tower wizards called home. Nor would you find Rapture on any civilized maps since few if any civilized people had any business or desire to go there.

Rapture was a town built by and inhabited by rogues, bandits, and criminals of every order. Only those of lowest morals and most evil intent would call Rapture home, and the unfortunates that were born there and lacked the money to leave. It was a truly lawless land with right and wrong often determined by the end of a sword.

The wind picked up and forced Azerick to wrap a strip of cloth around his face to filter out some of the dust and sand that threatened to fill his lungs. He even had to do the same for Horse who complained bitterly for a while, shaking his head in an attempt to dislodge the foreign material covering his large nostrils, but he either got used it, gave up, or realized that it made his breathing a little less unpleasant and eventually relaxed and ignored it.

The desert stretched endlessly and silently before him, the only sounds being the wind, Horse’s plodding steps, and the occasional screech of a vulture or bird of prey. How anyone could live their whole lives in such a wasteland was beyond him. The monotony of the almost monochromatic landscape was enough to drive him mad after only these few days of travel.

A sound like the deep rumble of distant thunder made its way to his ears but the rumbling did not end. It continued its low droning and was getting steadily louder. Azerick raised his head to peer off into the distance. He was forced to squint in an effort to protect his eyes from the blowing grit. A massive wall of dust and sand bore down on him like a colossal avalanche intent on sweeping away everything in its path.