✥
KRAZKA YAWNED, STRETCHED, and then rolled over on the bed. He lifted an arm and placed it lazily on the figure beside him, absently stroked his lover’s back. The flesh felt cool, in stark contrast to the endless burning in his face where the Shaman’s fist had half torn it off. He’d grown to enjoy the barely concealed horror in the eyes of his subjects when they saw the shattered hollow of his cheek, the ear half hanging off his head. He even took a twisted pleasure in the throbbing agony. It reminded him he was alive.
After all, only the dead felt no pain.
The room was still dim, the single candle lighting the king’s chamber casting only a meagre light into the grey gloom. Krazka always woke with the dawn: this was his favourite hour, the silent stillness before the sun bathed the world in fire and noise. The dawn was ripe with potency; in its heady embrace a man could dream that he might achieve anything, be anything.
Reach for the stars.
He dreamed of his mother often. Remembered her voice when the weight of the world began to wear on his shoulders and he needed a little encouragement to keep him on the path right and true.
Reach for the stars.
He sneered and his grip tightened on his bedmate’s shoulder, his nails digging into skin. Of course, his old ma had never told him to reach for the stars. Only words he ever remembered uttered by the whore who had spilled him into the world were those she’d left him with as she let go of his feet and turned away.
I don’t love you. I’m sorry, I just don’t love you. Hard words for any babe to hear, not made any sweeter when it was his third naming day and he’d just been dropped head-first into a cesspit no less than twice a man’s height and that was before you counted the huge stinking mound of shit at the bottom.
He hadn’t cared about revenge at the time. That’d come after. But even then, barely able to walk even without taking into account the fractured leg he’d suffered in the fall, he knew that he had to climb up. To keep on reaching if he wanted to survive. So that’s what he’d done, until he emerged from the pit three days later, covered in filth and looking like a demon crawled out of the abyss. Still, all that was the past. The future was what mattered now – and it belonged to him.
Reach for the stars. He heard the Herald’s voice in his skull again, the hint of amusement in the demon lord’s words, as if they held a double meaning, some joke only it was privy to. Krazka wasn’t fond of anyone making jokes at his expense, but he figured a twenty-feet-tall fiend with razor claws and fangs could be excused. If only the Herald would hurry its scaly arse back to Heartstone and bring a horde of its kin with it, the situation with the three armies surrounding his city would look a good deal less vexing.
He yawned again, then gave the unresponsive figure beside him a shake. He stopped when he suddenly recalled the climax of last night’s entertainment. ‘On second thoughts, I’ll let you rest,’ he said wryly.
He turned the shake into a fierce shove and the corpse tumbled out of the bed. Lifeless limbs flopped around the man, whose head settled at an awkward angle, arched up to reveal the bright red maw in his throat. His dead eyes were still wide with shock. Krazka chuckled at that. ‘They call me the Butcher King,’ he murmured. ‘What did you expect?’
He rolled from the bed and stepped around the body to retrieve his clothes, pleased to see they were unsullied by the blood glistening on the old wooden floorboards. He got dressed, threw the great white cloak made from the pelt of the Highland cat he had killed over his shoulders and fastened the clasp. The huge cat had ambushed him in a mountain pass many years ago. He’d ended its life armed with nothing but a pocketknife, though the fight had cost him an eye. You didn’t take much out this world without giving a little in return.
He strapped on his sword belt, pausing a moment to draw the single-edged blade from the scabbard and admire the perfect balance. Demonsteel – or abyssium, as the Herald had named the metal from which it was forged. It could be found nowhere in the earth, for according to the Herald abyssium did not belong to this world. With it, no magic could harm Krazka. Carn’s sorceresses had learned that lesson the hard way. The Shaman too, though it was a different, even more dangerous weapon that had done for their erstwhile Magelord.
Krazka reached down to the opposite side of his belt and caressed the hilt of the deadly tool holstered there. Then he rubbed his blind left eye with the back of his hand, wiping away the film of mucus that always formed during the night. Most would consider losing the sight in one eye to be a disadvantage, but Krazka found that it helped him focus. Helped him see through the web of a thousand lies men and women alike spun to fool themselves into believing the world was a better place than they knew to be true. That they were better than their actions said they were; that all the jealousy, all the cheating, and all the hypocrisy they despised in others was somehow justified in their own twisted little selves.
Krazka had no time for such deceits. He wielded only the truth with all its sharp edges, and if anyone had a problem with that they need only dig up the mountain of corpses he’d left at Beregund and Reaver’s Gate and ask ’em why that might not be such a wise idea.
There was a clumsy knock on the door of the bedchamber and it creaked open. The giant bleached skull of a bear began to emerge into the room, but it was too wide for the gap and got wedged between the door and the frame.
‘I’m stuck,’ rumbled the deep voice of Bagha from beneath the skull. Krazka’s eye narrowed and he idly considered drawing his sword and ridding himself of his lumbering oaf of a Kingsman once and for all. But the huge Lakeman had at least proved loyal to him. There was something to be said for loyalty after Wulgreth and the self-proclaimed knight Sir Meredith had upped and disappeared. Not to mention Shranree, his senior sorceress.
With a sigh, Krazka sauntered over to the door and removed the jamb. The door banged open and Bagha stumbled into the room clutching his ridiculous war mace in his ham-like fists.
‘First things first, bearface,’ said Krazka patiently. ‘You knock before you enter the king’s chambers. Second, when it comes to keeping a watch out for those who might mean me harm, wearing a fucking great bear skull over half your face don’t strike me as perspicacious.’
‘I don’t know what that word means,’ Bagha replied slowly. ‘But if you want me to take this off, that’s all right with me, boss.’
‘If any other man dared call me “boss” instead of “my king” I’d see him lose his tongue,’ Krazka said brightly. ‘But seeing as you’ve got shit for brains I’ll let it pass. Case you forgot, I crowned myself King of the High Fangs months ago.’
Bagha reached up to remove the skull covering his head. Then he took a step back and stumbled over the body beside the bed. There was a crack as four hundred pounds of hulking Highlander and a hundred pounds of iron war mace hammered into the wooden frame. The giant oaf climbed slowly back to his feet and stared down at the bed, which now sagged heavily on one side. ‘Sorry,’ he rumbled.
Krazka sighed and pointed down at the corpse. ‘I’m gonna go take a walk. Get rid of that.’
Bagha stared at the naked body. His small eyes narrowed beneath his brutish brow.
‘Something the matter?’ Krazka asked.
‘Why’s he got no clothes on?’
‘Why do people usually not got clothes on? Most times it’s because they’re bathing, fucking or lying in a hole in the ground. Maybe you could help expedite the latter instead of looming there like the unholy spawn of a she-bear and a tree trunk.’
Even a mind as ponderous as the huge Kingsman’s couldn’t fail to put the pieces together. ‘Ain’t right for two men to lay together,’ he rumbled.
Krazka grinned. ‘You got a man with his throat opened up bleeding out over the floor... and that’s what’s troubling you?’
‘It’s against the Code,’ Bagha muttered, staring down at his huge feet.
Krazka’s grin faded. ‘The Code’s dead,’ he snarled. ‘These are the new times. The old rules don’t apply any more, not that they ever applied to yours truly in the first place. I fuck who I want. Fact is, man or woman, it’s all just flesh to be used. Used and then tossed away.’
If a nefarious former outlaw like Bagha – a man who often spoke casually of how he had murdered his own wife – could look uncomfortable at talk of killing, the hulking Kingsman managed it just then.
*
The cold no longer bothered Krazka. Since his bargain with the Herald thirteen years ago – shortly after the massacre at Reaver’s Gate – the self-styled Butcher King found himself unaffected by the extremes of both the harshest winter nights and the hottest summer days. His fortieth year had been and gone, but as he marched along the battlements running the perimeter of Heartstone’s great wooden palisades Krazka felt stronger than ever. The Herald had told him he would retain the vitality of a man half his age for the rest of his life: one of the many gifts the demon lord’s mysterious master, the Nameless, had bestowed upon the one-time chieftain of the Lake Reaching.
Krazka’s lone eye swept the snow-covered hills to the west, where Carn Bloodfist’s host was encamped. After weeks of skirmishing in the Heartlands, the civil war tearing the High Fangs apart would finally converge on the capital and the fate of the country would be decided. The chieftain of the West Reaching and his vast army would fall upon Heartstone’s walls in a great tide. When they did, Krazka intended to be ready.
He had ordered archers posted on the battlements. They bowed as he passed them, though few dared meet his gaze. In truth they hated him almost as much as they feared him, but so long as they did what they were told Krazka cared not. Reasons had never interested him so much as results. Men liked to rationalize their decisions in a thousand different ways, but in his experience the world functioned much the same when you ignored the ‘why’ and focused only on the outcome.
At regular intervals along the western palisade were hung huge iron cauldrons cast by the smithies at the Foundry. They were suspended over large braziers by chains connected to winches. As soon as Krazka gave the order, the cauldrons would be filled with oil and the braziers lit. The defenders on the battlements would then hoist the cauldrons up to the walls and rain boiling black death down on those on the other side. It was a nasty way to die, though Krazka could think of worse.
I been blessed with a vivid imagination in that regard. He reached his destination and stared up at the wicker cage swinging from the gallows above the west gate. He couldn’t claim the credit for that particular implement; the Shaman had devised it. The occupant was slumped as far as the prison’s wicked design would allow, his body locked in perpetual discomfort. He’d been a hearty young man only three months back; now the former king of the High Fangs looked as frail as someone thrice his years.
Krazka grinned at the sorry sight. A sudden gust of wind set the prison to creaking and he raised his voice to be heard above the noise. ‘Enjoying the new view? I reckon you’ll do well to survive until Carn’s men get here. The winter ain’t getting any warmer. ’Course, your old man managed a whole year in one of these things, but then I figure he was made of stronger stuff than his son.’
‘Why?’ The voice was rasping, broken. ‘What... did I do to you?’
Krazka stared out across the vast expanse of the King’s Reaching. Just outside the walls, feline shapes patrolled the snowy ground. Occasionally one would disappear and then materialize twenty yards away. The blink demons were few in number but even the Brethren had been unable to cope with their strange abilities. Further distant, lines of squat figures stood unmoving, waiting for the enemy to arrive. Demonkin were the weakest of demons, but the fear they inspired could cause a seasoned warrior to shit his breeches as surely as that of any other fiend.
‘You, personally?’ Krazka said eventually, when he was satisfied all was in order. ‘You ain’t done anything to me, save take what was rightfully mine.’ Krazka drew his abyssium sword and examined the edge in the light of the nearby torch. ‘It should’ve been me that was made king after Jagar’s heart finally gave out. Your dad’s favour with the Shaman meant you got the crown instead. Now, your pa might’ve been my match with a sword or he might not –guess we’ll never know, what with him long gone. But he never knew his head from his arse when it came to tactics on the field of battle. It was me that saved the day at Red Valley. Didn’t get any thanks for it either.’
From up in the cage there was a harsh sound that might have been choked laughter. ‘You’re jealous? You did all... this because you wanted to be king?’
Krazka’s eye narrowed and the world seemed to flicker red. Before he knew it he was pointing the barrel of his deadly weapon up at the cage. He checked himself at the last moment and instead spun the weapon three times before replacing it on his belt. ‘Ain’t so much jealousy as disgruntlement,’ he said. ‘I’m sick of privilege. Bastards getting something they don’t deserve because they was born in the right place or their face fits the image of the man other men want them to be. Take the Sword of the North, your old pa. Got a nice story, I’ll admit: sole survivor of a demon attack that massacred his village, goes on to become some great Warden over in the Borderland. Don’t hurt that he looks the part, what with those blue eyes. Men need their legends and I guess he fit the Shaman’s bill. Still, the thing about legends is that legends cast shadows. I got caught up in his. Krazka One-Eye, the man who crawled up out of a cesspit and fought his way to the top of the pile to become chieftain of the largest of the Reachings. Kayne got to be the hero. I got to be the butcher.’
‘You... wanted to be a hero?’
‘Naw. I want to be a legend. Heroes got a nasty habit of dying before their time. I want to get old and die happy with my name carved into history – a name bigger than any before me. I want the High Fangs, and the Lowlands, and the lands across the great ocean the Herald sometimes whispers of. You got to keep reaching, see. If you’re not climbing you’re falling and there’s only ever death waiting for you at the bottom.’
‘But... demons...’ The voice was growing fainter, the effort of uttering so many words having already exhausted the prisoner.
‘You work with what you got. I ain’t no great Magelord or Lowland prince. The gods are dead and the darkness of infinity waits for us all in the end. No point living a life with limits. Sentiment’s worth nothing. Look what it got your dad. A year spent caged and hounded till the ends of the earth because he let family get in the way of business.’
A weary voice called out, ‘For a man who prides himself on action, you talk a lot. The boy’s dying. Let him be.’ Orgrim Foehammer, chieftain of the East Reaching and second-in-command of Heartstone’s army, joined them on the battlement above the west gate. His face was haggard above his beard, his eyes midnight-dark from lack of sleep. Rana trailed a little behind Orgrim. The thin-faced sorceress seemed uncomfortable in her new role as leader of the town’s circle.
‘You two make for a sorry sight,’ Krazka said jovially. ‘And you’re late, woman. I said the crack of dawn, not the crack of whenever-the-fuck-you-feel-like.’
‘Forgive me, my king,’ Rana said, her voice trembling slightly. ‘My nephew disappeared last night. I’ve been searching for him, to no avail.’
‘Ah.’ Krazka studied the woman’s features for the first time. The nose surely bore a resemblance. Hadn’t the lad he brought back to his chambers last night mentioned his aunt was a sorceress? He gave her a big grin. ‘Let’s hope he turns up safe and sound. Right now we got other things demanding our attention.’ Krazka reached under his cloak and withdrew the steel tube Wulgreth had brought back with him from the North Reaching. At least that was the story the strange warrior had told Krazka: a lot of things about Wulgreth failed to add up.
The Butcher King raised the looking tube, brought the narrow end up to his good eye. He watched the world dramatically shift in size, bringing into sharp focus pine trees armoured in frost and frozen streams glistening in the maiden light of a new day. And cutting across a sheet of blinding white snow, the dark line of an army on the march.
‘They’re on the move,’ he growled.
Orgrim frowned. ‘You said reinforcements would be here by now. If Mace’s forces arrive before Hrothgar’s men, we’re screwed. And the army of the Green Reaching inches closer by the day.’
‘Brandwyn’s men are more familiar with the wrong end of a sheep than the right end of a sword.’ Krazka’s voice was thick with contempt. ‘I slaughtered all the true warriors of the Green Reaching during their rebellion four years back. Just ask our boy there.’ He nodded up at the wicker cage, where Magnar Kayne was as silent as a ghost. Then he drew his long-barrelled projectile weapon with his left hand and his sword with his right and spread his arms towards the approaching army as if preparing to embrace his enemies. ‘Let them come,’ he snarled. ‘I’ll build a mountain out of their corpses. Tall enough to storm the heavens a second time.’
Despite his show of bravado, inside he felt the tiny seed of doubt beginning to grow. He didn’t like uncertainty, except when it was him inflicting it on others. He closed his eye and focused his thoughts, reaching out for the demon lord whose mind had been linked to his these last thirteen years.
When? he demanded silently, not confident he would receive a response. The Herald had been awful quiet of late. I’ve sacrificed as you asked. I need backup. Now.
Soon, replied the Herald’s voice in his skull. It was a strange sensation, akin to a dozen different voices all whispering at once. The ruined side of his face throbbed wildly, as if something were trying to crawl through his skin. An old foe has returned and the attention of the Nameless is required elsewhere. The disapproval in the demon lord’s next telepathic sending instilled utter fear in Krazka’s heart before the red rage that lived inside him – his own inner demon, that had seen him climb from a cesspit to the throne – flared and burned it to ash. That hand-cannon you hold... you were told to rid yourself of it.
Krazka stared at the weapon in his hand – the weapon with which he’d brought down a Magelord. A ‘hand-cannon’, the Herald had just called it.
I answer to no one and nothing! He sent his thoughts with a rage to match that of any demon lord’s. Not you and not this Nameless you serve. Best you remember that. I doubt even your scaly hide could withstand this weapon if it came to it. Utter silence greeted his outburst, and he wondered if he might have gone too far.
A harsh sound snapped his attention back to the here and now and he realized he was grinding his teeth together. Orgrim and Rana were watching him as if he’d gone mad.
‘Well?’ he barked. ‘The fuck you two doing just standing there? Go organize the town’s defences. Hell’s about to come to Heartstone.’