M Harrison - Viriconium

“You,” said Cromis, “could have done no better. You are as insubordinate as ever. You are a pirate. Put up that axe, or my familiar spirit”-here, he pointed to the vulture spiralling above them-“will probably tear the eyes from your unfortunate face. I have a great deal of trouble in restraining it from such acts.”

“You will, however, concede that I’ve captured you? I’ll chop the bloody bird up for dog’s meat if you don’t-”

And with that, Tomb the Dwarf, as nasty a midget as ever hacked the hands off a priest, did a little complicated shuffle of triumph round his victim, cackling and sniggering like a parrot.

“If I had known it was you,” said Cromis, “I’d have brought an army of occupation, to keep you quiet.”

Night.

A pall, a shroud of darkness lay over the slag heaps, to cover decently their naked attitudes of geographical death. Out on the waste, the harsh white glare of Tomb’s portable furnace dominated the orange flickering of a circlet of cooking fires.

Underlit by a savage glow like a dawn in Hell, the little Rivermouth man’s unbelievable face became demoniac, bloodcurdling. His hammer fell in measured, deadly strokes onto the soft, hot steel, and, as he worked, he droned and hummed a variant of that queer “Dead Freight” dirge:

Burn them up and drive them deep;

Oh, drive them down!

It was Cromis’s nameless sword, now whole, that flared in the furnace and sparked on the anvil, and drew closer to its gloomy destiny with every accentuated syllable of the chant.

After the meeting by the caravan, Cromis had called down the vulture and sent it to fetch Grif from his position in the hills. On his arrival, he had bellowed like an ox: it was a wild reunion between him and the dwarf, the one bellowing with laughter and the other capering and crowing. Now Grif was eating raw meat and shouting at his brigands, while Tomb and Cromis worked the forge.

“You interrupted me,” shouted the dwarf over the roar and wail of the bellows. “I was repairing that.”

And he jerked his thumb at a tangle of curved, connected silver-steel rods-resembling nothing so much as the skeleton of some dead metal giant-which lay by the furnace. Small versions of the motors that powered the airboats were situated at the joints of its limbs, and a curious arrangement of flexible metal straps and stirrups was attached halfway down each of its thighbones and upper arms. It looked like the ugly, purposeful work of long-dead men, an inert but dangerous colossus.

“What is it?” asked Cromis.

“You’ll see when we get a fight. I dug it up about a month ago. They had some beautiful ideas, those Old Scientists.” The light of Tomb’s sole enthusiasm-or was it simply splashback from the furnace?-burned in his eyes, and Cromis had to be content with that.

Later, the four Methven sat round a fire with a jug of distilled wine. The reforged sword was cooling, the furnace powered-down, the brigands noisily asleep or dozing in their smelly blankets.

“No,” said Tomb, “we aren’t too far behind them.” He displayed his repugnant teeth. “I’d have been up with Waterbeck and his well-disciplined babes by now, but I wanted to get that power-armour in good order.”

“It won’t be the same as the old days,” complained old Glyn. He had passed rapidly into the sodden, querulous phase of drunkenness. “Now there was a time.”

Tomb chuckled. “Why did I saddle myself this way? A greybeard with a bad memory, a braggart, and a poet who can’t even look after his own sword. I think I might join the other side.” He leered down at his hands. “Time I killed somebody, really. I feel like killing something.”

“You’re a nasty little beast, aren’t you?” said Birkin Grif. “Have some more wine.”

Cromis, content to have found Tomb if not Norvin Trinor, smiled and said nothing. More roads than this lead to Ruined Glenluce, he thought.

But in the end they had no need to go as far as Glenluce, and Tomb’s prediction proved true: two days later, they came upon Lord Waterbeck’s expeditionary force, camped several miles southeast of that unfortunate city, in a spot where the waste had heaved itself into a series of low ridges and dead valleys filled with the phantoms of the Departed Cultures.

Time is erosion: an icy wind blew constant abrasive streams of dust over the bare rock of the ridge; it had been blowing for a thousand years.

His black cloak flapping about him, tegeus-Cromis gazed down on the ancient valley; at his side, Grif stamped his feet and blew into his cupped hands. Beneath them spread the tents and bothies of Waterbeck’s army- multicoloured, embroidered with sigils and armorial bearings, but hardly gay. Canvas whipped and cracked, the wind moaned in the guylines, and armour clattered as the message runners hurried to and fro between piles of gear that lay in apparent confusion around the encampment.

The tents radiated as a series of spokes-each one representing a division of foot or horse-from a central pavilion surrounded by a complex of ancillary bothies: Lord Waterbeck’s command centre. There, canvas was replaced by oiled scarlet silk, shot through with threads of gold wire.

“He has a fine sense of his own importance,” said Grif scathingly. “We had better go down and upset it.”

“You are too harsh. Don’t prejudge him.” Cromis felt no enthusiasm for the task ahead. He fingered the hilt of the reforged sword and tried to shrug off his reluctance. “Tell Tomb to settle your men well apart from the main body, while we do what we can.”

They rode down one of the wide avenues between the tents, Grif resplendent on his yellow-caparisoned mare, Cromis crow-black in the cold, old wind. They drew a few stares from unoccupied foot soldiers, but, in general, interest was reserved for Grif’s smugglers, who were setting up camp around Tomb’s gaudy caravan. It was an unconscious parody of Waterbeck’s deployment, with the wagon replacing his showy pavilion. They looked like a travelling road show.

Cromis caught threads and tail ends of conversation as he rode:

“The Moidart…”

“… and you can’t trust a rumour.”

“Twenty thousand Northmen…”

“… the Moidart…”

“… and bloody airboats. Bloody scores of them!”

“What can you do about it?”

“… glad to get it over and done.”

“… the Moidart.”

At barely thirty years of age, Lord Waterbeck of Faldich had imposing grey hair-cut short and smoothed impeccably back from his forehead- and an urbane manner. His features were bland and boneless, his skin unwrinkled but of a curiously dry, aged texture. He wore a neat, tight jacket of tasteful brown cord, quite unadorned, as were his well-shaped, unobtrusively manicured hands. Cromis imagined that it would be difficult for him to offend any of his peers, and that it was precisely this inability that had earned him his present position.

When they entered the pavilion (it was less opulent than its outer appearance suggested, and draughty) he was sitting behind a small, cluttered camp table, adding his signature to a sheet of white vellum covered with careful grey script. He raised his head, nodded brusquely, and gave his attention to his work again.

“There is an official recruitment booth just along the way,” he said, his voice crisp and pleasant. “But never mind, now you’re here. I’ll call an orderly and have him deal with you here.”

He looked up and smiled very briefly.

“From your appearance, I’d say you’ve come some distance to serve. Encouraging to see newcomers, although there won’t be many more. Well done, men.”

Birkin Grif stepped forward, simultaneously puzzled and antagonistic. “This is Lord tegeus-Cromis of Viriconium,” he said, “a knight of the Order of Methven. We are here on the Queen’s business. It is imperative that-”