Carnifex (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 1) (22 page)

He shoved Carnifex back, then pounded him like a hunk of meat, blow after blow after blow. Carnifex caught some on the arms, but they hurt like shog, and numbness started to seep in. He tried to push back, but Kallos was too heavy, too strong. He kicked out at a knee, but Kallos caught him by the ankle and flipped him. Carnifex fell cleanly and rolled to his feet, but Kallos was there waiting, and smashed a fist into his face. Carnifex swooned and stumbled, and Kallos hit him again—a hammer blow to the jaw that sent him sprawling.

The crowd roared, and Kallos lifted his arms in victory.

Slowly, painfully, Carnifex scrabbled at the ground, shook his head, and stood with a wobble and a waver.

He expected Kallos to pass comment, gloat, give him a moment to recover, but for the second time in the fight, the baresark surprised him. Kallos charged back in, but rather than throw any more punches, he swept Carnifex up in his arms, hoisted him overhead, and brought him crashing down against a raised knee. It was a move designed to break his back, but Carnifex twisted and took the brunt on his arm. Even so, his arm would have broken, if not for the thick muscles he’d built with the weights Rugbeard had made him.

Kallos flung him to the ground. Pain jolted along Carnifex’s back all the way to his skull. Kallos came down at him, knees first, but Carnifex rolled aside. Kallos grabbed him by the hair and yanked him back. Carnifex backhanded him in the face and broke free.

They circled each other more warily now, but if anything, Kallos seemed to grow more enraged with every blow Carnifex landed. It’s what baresarks did: excelled on physical punishment. Hit them with everything you had, and they’d keep coming back stronger.

Kallos stopped circling and lunged. Carnifex tried to back away, but his legs were jelly, and he stumbled. The Crusher got a hand round his throat and squeezed. Carnifex gasped, started to choke. He could feel his face reddening, same as Hagrock’s had. Soon it would turn purple, and he’d black out, if Kallos didn’t snap his neck first.

 
He closed his fingers around Kallos’s wrist and gave a squeeze of his own. At first, nothing happened, but he found the joint and focused his pressure there. Kallos tightened his grip on Carnifex’s throat. Vision blurred, breaths came in wheezing trickles. Carnifex put everything he had into one last effort. Something popped in Kallos’s wrist, and his fingers sprang open. He swore, and punched Carnifex so hard in the face it pitched him to his arse.
 

And again, Carnifex got up.

This time, he made a show of it, and goaded Kallos on. Kallos caught him with a hook to the cheek. Carnifex staggered, then invited him to try again. Kallos rocked his head back with a jab, then thundered a cross into his temple. White pain blazed behind Carnifex’s eyes, and drove the black dog back to the corners. A trail of coruscating argent seared through his skull and ignited something in his depths. Vigor flooded his limbs, tautened every muscle. Kallos swung for him again, but Carnifex bobbed his head out of the way. Suddenly, the baresark looked slow and cumbersome.

Carnifex ducked beneath a jab and powered a punch into Kallos’s ribs. He was rewarded with a resounding crack, and Kallos fell back clutching his side. With a bellow, the baresark took his rage up another notch, and he went for a grapple, but missed. He was a lumbering oaf now, to Carnifex, and yet the reality was quite different: Carnifex was moving faster. He was sure of every step, every punch, and he could see what Kallos was doing before he did it.

Hook followed hook, all of them dodged. Kallos tried setting up with a jab, but Carnifex countered with one of his own that split the skin above the baresark’s eye. Kallos swung a wild haymaker, but Carnifex danced round him and delivered a chopping blow to the back of his neck. The baresark hit the ground with a thud. He started to rise, but Carnifex kicked him in the ribs, and he slumped down. He started up again. This time, Carnifex let him find his feet, then stepped in and poleaxed him with a vicious uppercut. Kallos teetered backward, steadied himself, took a step forward, and collapsed.

That’s for my pa, shogger
, Carnifex thought as he staggered across the ring to reclaim his chainmail and gambeson. The roaring of the crowd, the applause, was like a hive of hornets in his skull. A throbbing ache pulsed through his head, and every limb felt heavy and swollen. Needles of pain lanced between his ribs, and his eyes were puffy, closed to slits.

The baresark he’d given his axe to emerged from the trench and returned it with a nod of respect. Carnifex set it down while he got his armor back on, then snatched it back up and strode from the ring.

The scrawny dwarf was waving his notebook at him and calling out, “Come and see me. I can make you a ton of tokens, Butcher.”

Carnifex ignored him; ignored the well-wishers; ignored them all.

He’d proven himself, but what had it achieved, save for a world of hurt, and a deepening of the emptiness that had followed Droom’s death? It was an ever-widening breach that had gotten worse with the loss of his friends—of Cordy and Thumil—and no amount of slugging in the ring could close it up again.

He pushed his way clear of the crowd and found a beer tent. The first flagon lessened the pain some; the second all but killed it. But he didn’t stop there. He drank and he drank and he drank.

Last thing he recalled was stumbling across the embankment by the
Sanguis Terrae
, mesmerized by the orange glow of the braziers spangling its surface. Whores flaunted themselves at him, then cursed him when he didn’t respond. Their voices gave way to the siren call of the lake, summoning him, urging him to end it all here and throw himself in. He took one faltering step toward the shoreline, then another, but his legs gave way, and he fell face first in the dirt.

WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR

“Carn. Carnifex Thane. Up soldier. Come on, Lieutenant, get your lazy arse up and out of here.”

Thumil?

 
Hands grabbed his shoulders, gently shook him, rolled him over. His head lolled to one side. Red flared behind his eyelids, stung him deep in his throbbing brain.

“Thank shog,” he heard Thumil say. “Thank shog I found you.”

Carnifex cracked open an eye, peered through a slit. Try as he might, it would open no more, and when he raised his hand to feel, the skin around it was puffed up and raw.

“Quite a fight you put on,” Thumil said. “It’s all over the city. Everyone’s talking about it.”

“That how you found me?” Carnifex muttered through swollen lips. He turned his head so he could look up at Thumil. All he saw was a blur of gold and pinpricks that might have been eyes.

“You stupid shogging shogger,” Thumil said in a breaking voice. He leaned down and got his arms beneath Carnifex, drew him into a cradling hug.

“Does this mean you have to arrest me? Or aren’t circle fights illegal anymore?”

“Shog that.” Thumil was weeping openly now, his tears splashing on Carnifex’s face. They seemed to soothe some of the soreness. “If Yuffie’s above the law, we might as well all be.”

Carnifex tried to laugh, but it nearly split his swollen lips. “You don’t believe that, Thumil.”

“No. No, I don’t. But I believe in you, my friend. I believe in you.”

Thumil wrapped something damp around Carnifex’s shoulders and propped him up in a sitting position. It smelled of must and something worse.

“Your cloak, Carn. I found it in the gutter. I assume you didn’t want to make yourself a target down here. Shog knows what you’ve done with your helm. No doubt there’s a baresark somewhere using it as a piss pot.”

A chorus of gibbers had Carnifex turning his head. The movement slung agony through his skull. He could make out hazy shapes hanging from the base of the ravine wall across the way.

“Gibunas,” Thumil said. “They were just starting to get brave when we showed up. A while longer, and you’d have been breakfast.”

“We?” Carnifex said. His heart started hammering. Had Cordy come, too?

He forced open his other eye and scanned the embankment behind Thumil. Gradually, a score of Black Cloaks came into view, and further back, what looked like an entire platoon of Ravine Guard formed a line looking back toward the streets.

He focused back on Thumil, who was wearing his golden helm and red cloak. Probably, it was the last time he’d don his marshal’s uniform before handing over to Mordin later in the day.

The thought reminded Carnifex of what he’d lost: not just his pa, but his oldest and best friends. He could tell Thumil thought otherwise, but you had to be realistic. He was marrying Cordy, for shog’s sake. And more than that, he was now the Voice of the Council. He wouldn’t have time for friendship, and even if he did, he’d need a better sort than a fallen lieutenant of the Ravine Guard.

He lay back down on the hard ground, pulled his cloak about him. The “something worse” he’d smelled was piss, he was sure of it, but he was beyond caring. “Go, Thumil. Leave me here. There’s nothing for me up top now.”

“Son, there is,” Thumil said. “There always will be.”

Carnifex felt himself fading, but then he saw a stretcher being lowered down from the walkway above.

“I’m not going to have a choice, am I?”

“No, Carn. No, you’re not.”

Carnifex let out a sigh and gave up even thinking about resisting. As the stretcher touched down, and a couple of Black Cloaks rolled him onto it and strapped him in place, he said, “I love her, Thumil. Always have. Just never knew it till now.”

Thumil lay the axe he’d given as a present on Carnifex’s chest as the stretcher began to rise. “I know, son, and I’m all right with that. You are my friend, and I trust you with my life.”

“Cordy must never know,” Carnifex said.

“She won’t. And come the morrow, you and I will never speak of it again.”

THE BIG DAY

During the first few days of Carnifex’s recovery, Lucius might just as well have been absent. He was sequestered in his study, poring over the
Annals
Rugbeard had given him, comparing and contrasting them with the originals, which he brought home from the Scriptorium one at a time. Aristodeus came and went, obsessing over Yyalla’s helm as much as Lucius obsessed over the passages in the original
Annals
that mentioned golems and the Axe of the Dwarf Lords, which were conspicuously absent from the copy Rugbeard had made.

Lucius was thoughtful enough to give Carnifex the running summary of his findings each night before he went to bed. He was starting to think Rugbeard had deliberately missed out the passages concerned, though why he would do that, no one had any idea. Aristodeus was apparently less than convinced. If anything, he was trying to steer Lucius in a different direction, claiming, for once, he couldn’t be sure he was reading the patterns correctly. But, whatever the truth about the contentious passages, they formed an academic mystery, and for Lucius, that was like a taunt to a baresark.

Grimark was good enough to drop off a pie every morning. He’d heard about the circle fight and wanted to support the local hero. Carnifex had the feeling he dropped off more than one pie, but by the time Lucius delivered them to his bedside, that’s all that was left.

After three days cooped up in doors, he’d had about all he could take, and staggered down to Bucknard’s for a mead. When he returned home, Thumil was there waiting for him with an entourage of Red Cloaks, and one or two Kryptès lurking about outside.

“I want you to be my best man at the wedding, Carn. I know that might not be possible for you, but I wanted to ask you all the same.”

The request chafed, but what could Carnifex say, other than yes? It wasn’t Thumil’s fault, the way things had turned out. Nor was it Cordy’s. He only had himself to blame.

“What’s Cordy have to say on the matter?”

Thumil cocked his head and chuckled. “Told me the wedding was off, if you refused.”

Tempting as it was, Carnifex couldn’t do that to his friend. “Then I must accept, Thumil. It would be my honor.”

And he meant that. Decisions had already been made. The die had been cast. There was no point regretting what was past, what might have been. It could grate and irk him till the Unweaving of all the worlds, but loyalty to friends overrode personal suffering. That’s how his mother had been, according to the stories, and that’s how he remembered his pa.
 

Thumil left the ring with him—the ring destined for Cordy’s finger—and then he was off, his personal guard trailing after him.

The day of the wedding, a Red Cloak arrived at the house to escort Carnifex. He was vaguely familiar—he had an enormous shield and a mace—but it was only when Carnifex asked the fellow’s name and got the answer, “Grimwart”, that he remembered him as the dwarf from the mines, the one who’d volunteered to go below and check for any more golems.

“But everyone calls me Duck,” Grimwart said. “On account of this.” He hefted his mace and made a playful swipe. “When I start swinging, the lads shout ‘Duck!’ Overtime, it grew into a nickname. Guess I got used to it, and it stuck.”

“Good of Thumil to send you, Duck, but I can look after myself.”
 

Carnifex had on his chainmail and his freshly-washed Ravine Guard cloak, but he hadn’t bothered replacing his helm. What was the point? Once the wedding ceremony was over, there’d be no more need for it. He was done with the Guard. Shog knew what he was going to do instead, but anything had to be better than working under Mordin. Not only that, but he felt a door had closed on that part of his life since Thumil had been made Voice.

“Thumil didn’t send me,” Duck said.

“Then who?”

“Come on, you’ll see.”

Cordy’s house was on the seventeenth, a stone’s drop from Carnifex’s. It was surrounded by Red Cloaks, but Duck got them through the cordon. He led Carnifex to the hearth room and waited outside.

Cordy was seated on a stool, the hoops of her underskirt falling away from her hips toward the ground in widening circles. An unlaced corset covered her torso, but gave her breasts room to breathe. A team of local lassies fussed about her, curling her hair into ringlets, plaiting her beard and tying the slender braids with golden thread. A dress more pristine than Thumil’s white robe hung from a stand in front of the hearth. It had to be made of pure silk, and was embroidered with subtle traces of silver. Her exposed skin had a radiant, pinkish glow, her nails were lacquered with ivory, and her cheeks bones and eyes had been accentuated with delicate highlights and daubs of color.