by Robert Mammone
in Issue 129, October 2022
When Colcothar staggered into the clearing, he had been hunted for three days. His grimy furs were black with blood and his beard matted and filthy. A bruise purpled one eye, and fire had reduced most of the hair on his head to blackened stubble. Blood pulsed weakly from a hastily sewn wound across his ribs, drenching the furs around it. His breath rasped like a file on stone. The sounds of pursuit dogging him abruptly vanished into a haunted silence.
Reeling, he stared wildly about as foggy breath plumed into a halo above his head. Red shafts of light eerily lit the clearing, a premonition of the death following him. Groaning, Colcothar mustered the strength to whistle. What black-spotted leaves remained on the gaunt trees rustled in response, sending a shiver through him. Darkness born from blood loss threatened to drag him under and only with a savage shake of his head did he stay upright. As the haze lifted, he realized he stood yards away from a rough-hewn wooden palisade, its gates wide open.
‘Ho, stranger.’
Colcothar looked up and saw a brawny figure staring down at him from the top of the wall.
‘Shut the gates,’ Colcothar croaked. He turned at the sound of something crashing through the trees. He reached for the sword he had lost a day ago, buried to the hilt in the head of a nightmare, and curled it into a fist in frustration instead. A large, shaggy dog appeared from the tree line. The man on the wall swore at the size of it.
The dog approached Colcothar. Its shoulder reached his hip. Colcothar scratched the dog’s neck.
‘They close?’ he said. The dog turned its huge head around and stared into the forest. Something cold landed on Colcothar’s face and suddenly snowflakes were falling around him. When he was younger, he had no time for fear. He did now.
‘Close the damned gates,’ he shouted. He shambled to the gap where a knot of men had gathered.
Inside the palisade, Colcothar glimpsed a dozen cabins wallowing in thick mud along the left wall, smoke curling from chimneys. Opposite were the stables, the ripe smell of manure and fodder heavy in the chill air. Along the back wall stood a long, low building. Beyond it rose the shingled roof of a sawmill. The distant sound of rushing water beyond the back wall echoed.
The camp was a chaos of mud, churned by the passage of dozens of men and horses each day, in which logs and bark lay half submerged. Standing alone, like an island of calm in a stormy sea, was a shed of mortared bluestone, smoke lifting from a single chimney. From within its shadow depths, the forge’s banked fires glowed sullenly like the gates of Hel. A sudden memory rising like Leviathan of a burning building made Colcothar’s heart hammer.
While the men closest to him watched curiously without offering to help, Colcothar turned to the gate and began to push on it, despite his bleeding wound. He felt the stitches stretch and hissed at the sharp pain. But Colcothar persevered. Putting his shoulder to it, he heaved on the timber as he heard hobnail boots clattering down the rough-hewn steps from the top of the wall.
‘What do you think you’re doing – ‘
The dog’s low rumbling growl promised bloody mayhem. The man slid to a stop, his hands held out warily.
‘Call that thing off.’
‘Get these fools to help me,’ Colcothar said, gasping with effort. The gate had partially sunk into the mud. Several of the men laughed.
‘Are you mad? Sunset is in half an hour. I’ve still got men coming in.’
‘Your men are carrion. If we don’t close this gate, we’ll be as dead as they are.’
Something in Colcothar’s voice made the man blanch. Aware the eyes of the men were on him, he hesitated a moment, before gesturing angrily at them. While some shuffled their feet, he went to where a square of beaten metal and a hammer hung from a post. He began striking the metal with the hammer. Clanging filled the air. Men spilled out of the largest building and hurried to the gates, joining the others.
‘What’s going on, Harald?’ said a squat logger with deep-set eyes.
‘This crazy bastard came out of the forest,’ Harald said. ‘He wants to shut the gates.’
‘Close the gates?’ The logger laughed. ‘Tavik and his boys are out there. We’re not closing anything until they get back.’
Colcothar rounded on the logger, whose good humor bled away as he stepped back under the full fury of his gaze. A hand and a half taller than anyone else, with his burned scalp and silver-shot beard, Colcothar looked like a prophet come down from the mountains to damn them all for their sins.
‘I don’t give one shit about those men,’ he shouted as more snow fell. ‘If we don’t close these gates we’re all going to d -’
A horn sounded in the depths of the forest. Its long, mournful note silenced the men. Hackles rising, the dog growled.
‘They’re coming,’ Colcothar said. A vivid memory rang in his mind clear as a bell, of the horn sounding close to the shrine. Dread gripped him, as did the realization he might die in the next hours with these strangers. ‘Close the gates and you might live.’
‘This is madness,’ Harald said. But the edge of command in Colcothar’s voice compelled several of the men forward. They joined him and pushed on the gate, forcing it over the rutted slush until it closed. The other gate proved short work. A pair of men lifted an oaken bar and dropped it into place. Finished, they stepped back, panting. Harald looked at Colcothar.
‘What now?’
‘Get every man on the walls.’ The old sensation of command settled over Colcothar like a cloak. What he would give for a legion now. ‘If they overrun us on the walkways, we fall back to that long building at the rear and cut our way out through the back wall.’
‘You keep on saying ‘they’,’ Harald said, his face red with anger. He resented the usurpation of his authority. ‘Who’s coming?’
Colcothar glanced at him. ‘The Ice.’
Harald laughed. His humor dwindled when he saw the fury ignite in Colcothar’s eyes. ‘You talk of fairy tales,’ he said. Chuckles from the other men rose around him. ‘What are we, children?’
‘Children die just as easily as men.’ Colcothar stared passed Harald, at the forge standing by itself. He shambled towards it. The dog trotted after him. Flurries of snow blew across the muddy open ground. As he drew closer, the crash of metal on metal grew. A hulking shadow limned in scarlet, stood bent over an anvil, a huge hammer in one brawny arm.
The dog settled on its haunches beside the doors, teeth bared. Colcothar stepped inside.
The warmth was a welcome respite from the bitter cold. The smith turned to look at him, his white eyes blazing in a ruddy, ash-smeared face.
‘Who are you?’
‘A man in need of a weapon,’ Colcothar said. He made straight for a rack running along the back wall and took down one of a half dozen double-bladed axes hanging from it.
‘This is good work,’ Colcothar said, turning the handle in his hands.
‘The best in any logging camp in the north.’ The smith cocked an eyebrow, bemused at the stranger who had appeared in his domain.
The ash handle felt good in Colcothar’s hands. The twin blades shone mirror bright. He caught a glimpse of his wild eyes and pale, gaunt features in the polished metal. Memories, hard memories of the last three days flashed through his mind. Fire and screams. A chaos of running, of fighting, of hooting laughter, and the endless wailing of the horn.
The dog’s growl called Colcothar back. He turned, the old, familiar sensations taking control. In the space of a heartbeat, he had lifted the axe, resting the leading edge of one of the blades against Harald’s neck. The foreman stopped but didn’t step back. Colcothar appreciated bravery like that.
Harald waved away the smith, who lowered his hammer.
‘You’re not a fool,’ Harald said, doing his best to ignore the metal edge digging into his skin. ‘I can see that. But you barred ten of my men from the camp. Why?’
Colcothar considered Harald. Tall, wide shouldered, heavily bearded like the other loggers. Fingers thick with calluses from wielding an axe every day. Face chapped with cold, eyes alert. A man who knew hardship and who valued companionship in the hard reaches of the north. A leader. A man Colcothar could use. He stepped away and let the axehead swing to the floor.
‘There are things in the forest. Something woke them. They’ve been chasing me for days.’ He paused, his breathing ragged. He hated weakness, most of all in himself. Groaning, he straightened and felt the rough thread tugging at his torn flesh.
‘You’re wounded?’
‘Aye,’ Colcothar said. ‘Not for the first time.’ He cocked an eyebrow at Harald. ‘Don’t be a woman about it.’ Harald colored. The smith chuckled.
‘You’ve found a good one here.’
‘Shut it, Kogar.’
A grin split Kogar’s face.
‘These things, then. The Ice. Tales to frighten a child.’
‘You don’t look like a stupid man, Harald. You’ve been in the north long enough to have heard these stories. They are true. All of them.’
‘And yet somehow you’re still alive. How?’
‘Luck,’ Colcothar muttered. He rubbed at his chest as if feeling for something. In his mind, the shrine burned like the heart of the sun.
Harald shook his head. ‘And they’re following you?’
‘Hunting, not following. They may already be here. If we’re lucky, they’ll pass by.’
‘And if we’re not lucky?’
A sudden scream sounded from beyond the gate. Harald glanced over his shoulder, then back at Colcothar.
‘Can they be killed?’
‘If it moves, it dies,’ Colcothar said. ‘There’s no more time for talk. Are you with me?’
Unnerved, Harald nodded.
Outside, the temperature hovered above freezing. The sun had guttered into the horizon and the day hung unsettled on the verge of night. The dog rose from the ground, the fur along its spine bristling. The snow had turned to pellets, stinging where they struck bare skin. More loggers emerged from their cabins, while those in the hall stumbled into the encroaching night.
Colcothar made straight for the stairs leading to the walkway, shouting orders as he went.
‘Stack that timber against the gate,’ he called to a group of men, gesturing at a pile of logs half buried in snow. ‘Grab whatever tools you can. You men – get on the wall with me. The rest of you, fall back to the main hall and wait.’
The horn sounded again, closer, louder, the warped howl painful to hear. More screams followed. The sleet intensified as the temperature plunged. Overhead, racing black clouds fumed across the sky. Colcothar saw men around him make the sign against evil.
Colcothar bulled his way up the steps, his boots stripping sodden bark away from the logs. At the top, he stepped onto the walkway, a two-yard wide expanse that ran the perimeter of the palisade. The wood creaked and groaned beneath his weight. The wind picked up.
Colcothar pushed past several men whose faces were marked with uncertainty and fear as they gazed at the forest. He stopped about halfway along. Resting his axe on his shoulder, with the sleet beginning to hammer sideways, Colcothar stared resolutely into the coming darkness.
Movement at the tree line. ‘It’s Tavik,’ someone shouted. A figure in furs staggered into the open. Ice clung to him like a shroud and his eyes were wild.
‘Here,’ Harald called, unlooping a rope. Securing one end to a post, he flung the other end into the teeth of the storm. It fell to the ground, the promise of escape from an approaching horror only Tavik could see.
Snow flew in thickening flurries. ‘Take the rope,’ Harald bawled. Terrified, Tavik wasted precious seconds looking over his shoulder. He flinched when an object, spraying blood, cartwheeled into the clearing.
Harald swore. Colcothar nodded grimly. Lying in the open, staining the snow crimson, were the remains of a man; crushed head, flayed shoulder, and a spindly arm with bite marks up and down its broken length. Throaty laughter drifted from the trees.
‘Run you bloody fool, run.’ Harald leaned out over the palisade, gesturing frantically at Tavik.
Down on the ground, the dog howled, the noise raising gooseflesh on those who heard it.
‘They’re coming,’ Colcothar whispered, hefting the axe. It wasn’t as well balanced as his sword, but there would be little need for finesse on the wall that day. Fat snowflakes mixed with sleet lashed the men. The temperature fell again. Ice formed quickly in Colcothar’s beard.
‘What in Hel’s name…’
The deepening blizzard rendered the treeline soft and indistinct. Within that liminal space, shapes an unearthly parade of obscene shapes moved. The stench of death rode the wind, filling the nostrils of every man on the wall.
‘What have you brought here?’ Harald yelled. His voice crackled with fear.
‘Does a man summon an avalanche?’ Colcothar growled, his focus on the trees. He felt the thing hanging from his neck, hidden by his furs, grow heavier. He heard a whisper in his mind and grimaced.
Snow engulfed Tavik as he frantically clambered up the rope. He was within reach of the top when his mouth drew open in a tight rictus and a tortured scream issued. The men hauling on the rope jerked back and almost fell off the walkway. The ragged end flew into the air, spraying blood.
For a long, lonely moment, there was only the whistling of the wind and the clatter of sleet on the wall. The forest’s ancient trees, old when the first men sailed out of the southern ocean, swayed and groaned. The crash of falling ice from shuddering branches sounded like the shrieking of the damned. The men stood frozen, waiting. And then…
An enormous crash shook the gates. Wood split and cracked, sending splinters flying. Shuddering thuds sounded all along the wall. Men shouted in panic. Out of the swirling snow, a face composed of gelid strips of white flesh swam into view in front of Colcothar. Swinging his axe, he caught the creature on the side of its bulbous head with a hideous crunch. Its bellowing cry was inhuman. The blood gouting from the terrible wound was the bitterest gall on Colcothar’s lips. He heaved and the axe came free, sending the lifeless creature tumbling into the flying snow.
‘Fight, you dogs,’ Colcothar shouted, as the sound of leathery wings boomed overhead. A man screamed and flew straight up into the air, blood falling in a torrent as talons tore him apart. Colcothar watched Harald stand open-mouthed as the wriggling figure disappeared into the turbulent clouds.
‘Fight or die,’ Colcothar roared, slapping Harald on the shoulder. Harald grimaced, then hefted his axe and faced the forest and the hell emerging from it.
The palisade shuddered again. Twisted black spears flew out of the snow with a curious fluting noise. One man, transfixed by a spearhead through his mouth, toppled silently backwards. A glancing blow struck Colcothar, spinning him around and almost throwing him off the walkway. He looked down and saw a great tear in his furs, in which a black spear had become tangled. Grimacing at the pain of his bruised flesh, he pulled free the spear and reversed it in his hand with a flick of his wrist. An unnatural cold bit deep into his flesh. With a convulsive shout, he thrust at a creature swarming over the wall, driving the spearhead deep into the soft flesh beneath its segmented shell plates. The creature vented an ululating cry that made Colcothar’s hair stand on end, then it vanished into the convulsing morass on the ground.
Wood cracked with a terrifying groan. Colcothar ducked under the clutching talons of another winged monster. Its rancid breath washed over him as finger-long teeth clacked close to his head. A dark figure clambered over the wall. Colcothar hacked down with the axe, chopping through a twisted limb. Black blood fountained into the air, turning to crystals in the plunging temperature. The limb fell at Colcothar’s feet, talons twitching. The creature howled, its wide mouth revealing yellow tusks. It was cut short when Colcothar’s axe split its face from crown to jaw. The creature fell away, screaming.
All along the wall men fought with whatever weapons they had. Harald brained a creature with the butt of his axe handle before cutting halfway through its neck on the reverse swing. Eyes wide as cattle heading down the killing chute, he fought like a man possessed.
Within the tumult of snow and sleet engulfing the camp, Colcothar glanced left and right, and saw the numbers on the wall had thinned dangerously. A gobbling face out of a nightmare appeared over the top of the palisade. Grabbing it by its throat, Colcothar dug his fingers into flesh as soft as snow. Its eyes bulged and multi-jointed arms flailed madly as he hefted it into the air and flung it at another creature menacing Harald. The two monsters grappled with each other as they fell to the ground. Panting hard, Harald nodded his thanks.
‘Call the men in the reserve,’ Colcothar shouted, moving away to cover a man who had slid to his knees, trying to stop his intestines from falling to the blood-sodden walkway. The dying man looked up. His eyes glazed as Colcothar cut in two the creature that had ripped him apart.
Harald turned to signal the men hunkered by the hall when a sudden quiet descended. Apart from the whistling of the wind and the clatter of sleet, there were no signs of further attack. All along the walkway, the surviving men shook themselves, blinking as if they had awoken from a nightmare. The man with his intestines clutched in his hands vented a long, low final breath, before tumbling to the ground.
‘They’ve vanished,’ Harald said, shaking his head in wonder. Apart from twin spots of red riding high on his cheeks, his ice-fringed face was as white as marble.
‘They never vanish,’ Colcothar said, his voice a long groan as he leaned against the palisade wall. Fresh blood from his wound ran down his side, the only warmth afforded his body in the intense cold. ‘Get every man on the…’ A sudden dizziness gripped Colcothar. Fresh blood welled from his wound where the stitches had snapped in his efforts to shut the gate. He swayed, like an oak in a storm, and then, as darkness claimed him, he fell.
***
When Colcothar woke, panic blossomed in his chest and he sat up. Flames crackled in a stone hearth, keeping the thin edge of cold at bay. He found himself covered in blankets on a rough-hewn bed. The aroma of cooked food rose from the floor, making his mouth water. A sudden fear filled him and he clutched at his chest.
‘Looking for this?’ Harald loomed out of the shadows in the cabin’s far corner, holding in one hand a leather thong. A small black object hung from it.
In snatched moments of rest during the endless night racing ahead of the remorseless tide of the Ice, Colcothar had gazed on the carving long enough to know its every contour, how the lips angled into a leering smile, and how the bulbous eyes glinted in the light like those of a madman raving at the moon.
‘What is it?’ Flames from the hearth cast bloody streaks of light across the black stone.
‘Nothing,’ Colcothar grunted. ‘A family heirloom, nothing more.’
‘This is a family heirloom?’ Harald glanced at it, shuddered, then threw it at Colcothar, who plucked it deftly from the air and hung it from his neck. Harald looked glad to be rid of it. Colcothar did his best to ignore the renewed whispering in his mind.
‘How long have I been out?’ Colcothar coughed at the scratchiness in his voice. He felt hot, even though his furs had been stripped from him.
‘A few hours.’ Wind moaned outside and the cabin shook. ‘It’s full dark and a storm has come down from the mountains.’ There was movement in a darkened corner of the cabin and a low growl issued from the massive shape resting there.
Harald glanced at the dog. ‘Damn thing nearly took my arm off when we carried you here.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘It’s mostly wolf, by the looks of it.’ He shifted his gaze to Colcothar. ‘Who the hell are you?’
Colcothar ignored the question. ‘What happened after the attack?’
Harald shrugged. ‘Nothing. They vanished back into the forest.’
‘And the men?’
‘Frightened. Some want to make a run south to the nearest township. That’s two days, through the wilderness, in the middle of a storm.’ He glanced at Colcothar, his face haggard. ‘I’ve got men on the walls keeping a lookout.’
‘It’s something,’ Colcothar said. ‘But not enough.’
‘Well, it’s the best I can do. We’re a logging camp, not a legion.’ Harald pointed to the plate of food beside the bed. ‘Looks like you fainted from loss of blood. Eat something, for pity’s sake.’
Colcothar looked at the dog, which looked back at him.
‘Don’t worry about that beast. We caught a boar yesterday. He’s eaten more than his fill tonight.’
Nodding, Colcothar dug into the food. Before he knew it, he was scraping the metal with the spoon. Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, Colcothar flung aside his blankets. His undershirt had crusted to the wound and pulled away with a wet tearing sound. Still, he managed to get to his feet, shaking off Harald’s efforts to help.
‘I’m not dead yet.’
‘Not for want of trying,’ Harald said. ‘Looks like you were in a fire.’
Colcothar grunted.
Harald’s eyes narrowed. ‘The forest north of here hasn’t heard the bite of an axe or the tread of man…ever. What happened?’
‘I ran south when the Ice appeared. Came across an old shrine. There were some monks living there. Hopeless cases…out of their minds on toadstools. Had to burn the shrine to hold back the Ice.’
‘You burned the…and the monks?’
Shrugging, Colcothar shook his head. ‘You know this country as well as I do. Life and death bare inches apart. I can live with the choices I’ve made.’
Colcothar considered his furs piled on the floor. Digging into them, Colcothar found his chainmail shirt. He held it up, finding several of the links rent apart from the turned spearhead.
‘That chainmail’s Legion made,’ Harald said quietly. ‘You’re a long way from home.’
‘Aye,’ Colcothar replied. He ignored Harald’s calculating stare.
‘I’ve a good smith who could repair it, but Kogar’s distracted at the moment trying to stay alive.’ Harald’s mouth worked for a moment, then he looked Colcothar squarely in the face.
‘What’s your plan?’
‘Plan?’
‘To get out of here alive. You must have an idea.’
Images of a burning shrine rose unbidden in Colcothar’s mind. He managed a thin, humorless smile.
‘Luck,’ he said. ‘Luck.’
With an effort, Colcothar slid the chainmail shirt over his head, wincing as the links tugged at his beard. Shrugging on his furs, he then pulled his boots on and picked up the axe. He clicked his fingers and the dog rose smoothly, its shadow massive against the cabin’s rear wall. ‘Let’s go see how we get out of this alive.’
Outside, the wind gusted across the logging camp. Wide patches of ice crusted the churned ground. Drifts of snow had built up along the walls. An eerie light from burning brands jammed into the palisade cast shadows headlong across the ground. Barrels had been placed along the base of the walls with piles of staves sitting next to each. On the walkway, a dozen men keeping watch stood huddled deep in their furs.
‘Oil from the smithy,’ Harald called out, pointing to the nearest barrel as they labored across the icy morass. ‘Need it to keep the torches burning. If any of my men are still out there, I want the camp lit up like it’s midday so they can find their way home.’
‘They’re each as dead as your friend Tavik,’ Colcothar shouted, fighting the wind. There was no way to soften his words; not after he had run for his life through the wilderness. Harald’s face darkened, but he kept silent.
Grim-faced men huddled together in the lee of the hall around hastily built fires as heavy snow fell. From the stables, they heard a man screaming, the sound abruptly changed to a rasping gurgle that dwindled to silence. Glances were exchanged, but nothing was said. Snow crunched and a figure approached out of the gloom. It was the smith, Kogar, his face spotted with blood.
‘Any sign?’ Harald asked. Kogar shook his head curtly. His afternoon’s good humour had vanished. He looked at Colcothar as if he might spit in his face.
‘Nothing. The men on the wall need to come down. They’re freezing up there.’
A cloud sailed in front of the moon and a dark shadow tracked across the ground, drowning the logging camp in darkness. From deep within the margins of the forest, wild, eager howls rose. The low talk stopped until the moonlight emerged once again.
‘Don’t talk about it. Get it done,’ Colcothar said. Sweat bathed his blood streak face and his heart pounded in time to the urgent whispering only he could hear.
‘I know you.’ A voice from amidst the men clustered around a guttering fire. Many wore rough bandages, the cloth torn from the bodies of dead loggers. The speaker shuffled forward, cradling a badly mangled hand swathed in blood-soaked fabric.
Colcothar watched him with dead eyes.
‘I know you,’ the man said, more insistent this time. His face was white in the moonlight. ‘General Colcothar. That’s you, isn’t it.’ There was no hint of a question, just a flat statement of fact.
‘What of it if I am?’ Colcothar’s mouth worked and then stilled.
‘Colcothar the Damned?’ Harald’s voice crackled with tension. ‘The Butcher of Golthog?’
‘Is that what they’re calling me now?’ Colcothar shook his head, a bitter smile stretching his face. ‘How quickly they forget.’
‘I didn’t,’ the logger said. Blood dripped from his maimed hand, droplets like black coins sinking into the snow. Men, keen to forget for a moment the carnage on the walls and keener still not to have to think what might soon come, turned to listen. ‘My brother was in the Fifth Legion. I was in the Third. You remember the Fifth, don’t you, General?’
Colcothar’s hand holding the axe handle went white.
Someone in the crowd asked the question on everyone’s lips.
‘What happened to it?’
‘Tell them, General,’ the man said, his voice a sneer.
‘We were trapped,’ Colcothar said. ‘Trapped against the Golthog Hills. A river in spate on one side, a valley on the other. The Sarakan tribes had gathered in secret, something that hadn’t happened in a century. The Fifth was a…diversion.’
Mocking laughter from the man. ‘A diversion? It was a bloody slaughter. To cover your mistake, you ordered the Fifth’s commander to hold his position no matter what, on pain of having his family killed if he gave up even one yard. You promised him a relief force once the army escaped over a pass across the Hills. There was no relief force, was there, General?’
‘We won, in the end,’ Colcothar snapped. ‘Victory demands sacrifices.’
‘Sacrifices? He was my brother, damn you.’
Colcothar was about to respond when, drifting on the wind, they all heard the anguished wailing of the horn.
‘We will survive, if you follow my lead. I want a dozen men hacking an opening through the hall. The rest of you, on the walkway, now,’ Colcothar shouted. He watched the men fight their way through the thickening flurries of snow. Harald loomed beside him.
‘Is that it. Your great plan. Cut our way through the hall?’ Harald shouted, grabbing Colcothar by the shoulder. Colcothar spun around, and Harald fell back under his wrathful glare.
‘I’ll not die on my knees,’ Colcothar shouted, his face contorted with rage. ‘The Ice can be beaten back, all we need is time.’ He pointed to the walkway. ‘I’ll be up there leading. You get some men to smash down that wall.’
‘We should’ve done that hours ago.’
‘We’re doing it now,’ Colcothar shouted. The whispering in his mind had grown urgent. Blood called for blood. Sacrifices would be made – again. The horn sounded, raising the hair on the back of his neck.
‘So my men will die for a distraction?’ Harald drew himself up, a look of pity on his face. ‘You won’t be satisfied until you’ve climbed over our corpses to escape.’
‘I’m leading that distraction, you damned fool.’ Colcothar ground his teeth. His frustration bubbled up. ‘Talk and die, or fight and live.’ He shoved himself past Harald. With the horn’s winding gaining greater urgency, Colcothar ascended to join the remaining men.
Ice-crusted pools of blood turned the walkway into a trap. A constant rattle of sleet battered the log walls. Fog blew in thick streamers, swirling and coalescing before breaking into tatters. The moon hung over the camp like a black spotted skull. Just as Colcothar mounted the walkway, the horn sounded again, eager for violence
‘We hold the wall as long as we can,’ he shouted, working his way along, pounding men on the back to impart some spirit. ‘There are men chopping their way through the back of the hall. We have to buy them time otherwise we’ll be trapped. When I give the signal, break contact and run for your lives.’
Amid the steady rain of icy pellets, the tension and fear of men contemplating their deaths, Coclothar’s words echoed down to a silence that stretched and stretched until men’s throats filled with a choking fear. Even Colcothar, that old warrior, felt his nerves tingle, heard the amulet’s dread whisper, and then…
A vile cacophony of hoots and screams rolled over the defenders like a long throbbing thunderclap. Unlike that afternoon, when the creatures of the Ice had seemed to hold back, this time their assault ran the length of the palisade facing the forest. Titanic shudders rocked the log walls. The timber split in places, thick black talons punching through as creatures out of a lunatic’s nightmare hauled themselves to the top. Men screamed their defiance and fear while hacking at creatures breasting the rough-hewn logs. Blood sprayed and limbs flew and the first wave was beaten back, barely.
A half dozen bodies either lay slumped on the walkway or were huddled on the ground, their blood staining the snow enveloping them. Colcothar heaved in breath after breath, holding onto the wall with one scarred hand. He glanced over his shoulder at the hall. He could see movement through the open doors, but no one emerged. The amulet throbbed insistently against his chest. His eyes narrowed, his mind calculating.
‘We’re all going to die.’ A voice, sobbing, gave way to despair.
‘Not all of us,’ Colcothar whispered. Harald hadn’t reappeared. Blood called for blood…
Grabbing a fiery brand, Colcothar moved to the stairs and descended rapidly, his hob-nailed boots skating across the steps more than once before they crunched into the snow on the ground.
Amidst the screeching of the next attack, Colcothar methodically went from oil barrel to oil barrel the men had rolled from the forge while he had been unconscious and shoved each over. The oil splashed against the walls and spread over the ground in an ever-widening circle. By the time he reached the last barrel, his chest was burning and he staggered with each step. Pausing to gather his strength, Colcothar began the return journey, using the brand to set alight the spilled oil. With each step, the laughter of the amulet inside his head grew louder and louder.
Flames roared up the wooden walls and leaped greedily for the night sky. By the time Colcothar reached the steps leading to the walkway, the stables were well alight and the horses were screaming in agony.
Pandemonium stalked the walkway. Leering monsters, all fangs and fur and claw and frostbitten flesh, flopped and clambered over the palisade, rending men limb from limb, or being in turn themselves slashed apart by desperate loggers. Already, part of the walkway was ablaze, separating a dozen men from their comrades farther along the wall. A despairing cry went up as one of the men staggered through a burning section, his hair and furs alight, his eyes running down his face as they popped and hissed in the sudden, blazing heat.
Rejoining the survivors, Colcothar fought like a man possessed, the urgings of the amulet in his mind in tempo with the pained thudding of his heart. The axe flew up and down, up and down, sending flesh and fur and blood in every direction. Creatures howled in his face, their teeth clacking bare inches from his, as he sent them screaming to their deaths. He carved a path along the walkway, clearing it of creatures that had slaughtered a group of loggers to the last man, until he reached the blazing section. Smoke spiraled into the air, littered with cinders that danced merrily in counterpoint to the carnage below. The ground beyond the palisade was littered with the dead and dying.
The horn wailed again, closer now, a bass rumble that made Colcothar’s teeth rattle in his head. A frigid blast of wind whipped across the camp, sending the flames roaring into the sky. A sudden hush fell over the battlefield; only the panting of a dying logger, and the blazing of the inferno consuming the logging camp, reached Colcothar. And then it came.
Huge beyond comprehension, its bulk shrugged aside the trees marking the edge of the forest. Crowned in ice, it loomed against the driving snow and the moon, swallowing the light. Its scaled skin was grey in places, black in others. Thick plates of flesh stood up and down its spinal ridge, vibrating in the wind and sending an ululating scream through the air. Hoar frost glittered along its length, great rimes of ice older than man’s time on the continent. Dead black eyes surmounted a gnarled head. A beaked mouth hung open, issuing a foul stench of glaciers and blackest rot. The howling of the creatures accompanying the beast fell away as if they too were awestruck by its sheer size. It stood higher than the palisade, higher even than the nearest trees.
‘Magnificient,’ Colcothar breathed, standing unbowed on the walkway as the fires all around him crept closer and closer. The heat of the flames had begun to crisp the remains of his beard, and his skin felt tight and feverish. The amulet beat an insistent drumbeat into him, firing his blood, smashing his heart against his ribs. The dying words of the last monk, green froth bubbling from his purple lips as the roof of the shrine began to collapse echoed in Colcothar’s head.
Damnation or salvation. They are your choice.
‘I choose damnation,’ Colcothar shouted into the teeth of the wind. ‘I choose to live.’
Crazed instinct gripped him. Colcothar hauled himself upright till he swayed precariously on the top of the palisade’s rough-hewn logs. As the monstrous creature lurched closer, Colcothar leapt, arms and legs pinwheeling, until he crashed onto the beast’s icy hide.
He immediately began to slide. Slamming the axe head into a gap between the icy scales, Colcothar arrested his descent. Boots scrambling for purchase, he struggled to his feet.
As if he were a gnat, the creature didn’t react to Colcothar’s presence. It surged forward, crashing against the palisade and almost dislodging Colcothar, who desperately hung on. Logs cracked and a section of the wall canted inwards. The creatures swarming along the ground hooted in anticipation.
The whispering in Colcothar’s head grew to a frenzied chanting. He tore the amulet free. Pulses of heat radiated from it. Gripped in a frenzy, Colcothar thrust the amulet above his head and began shouting half-remembered words he had heard the dying monk utter in the burning shrine.
Black light spilled from between his fingers, casting Colcothar at first in shadow, then into impenetrable darkness as the amulet drank the light from the fires and the moon itself.
Colcothar’s vision warped into a doubling of the world around him, overlaid with his memories of the shrine. Burning monks staggered through the holocaust. Other monks, trapped on the upper floors, plunged like falling stars to the cracked pavement below, their bodies casting off ash and chunks of sizzling meat in their wake.
Some primordial hunger drove the creatures forward, but even they weren’t insensate to the destructive forces of the flames. Their shrieks of agony as the radiating heat began consuming their bodies spiraled into the heavens.
Trapped for a long moment in those memories, Colcothar saw himself stumbling about in the fitful silence of the shrine’s smoldering ruins. Within the cracked maze of his mind, one word resounded over and over. Alivealivealivealive. A savage exaltation had filled him, before draining just as quickly as the renewed howling of the surviving creatures of the Ice sent him fleeing the shrine into the forest…
Colcothar shook his head and the images receded, replaced by the firestorm engulfing the logging camp. From his vantage point atop the creature’s head, he saw flames leaping up and across the palisade in great burning sheets, then from the wall to the stables to the cabins, before dancing across the roof of the hall. A few loggers stumbled out of the hall, their bodies on fire. Creatures swarmed through gaps in the walls. The roof of the main hall collapsed, sending up a vast column of smoke.
Watching all this from his swaying vantage point, Colcothar shuddered as the darkness engulfed him. With a cry, he pulled free the buried axe head, then chopped deeply into the creature’s skull. Flesh split and bone shattered as darkness poured down his arm and wreathed the axe head. The creature’s roarings became hooting cries of agony as its skull split open and the axe plunged deep into the stinking brain. Blood bubbled and flowed and spurted as shudder after shudder wracked the enormous body. Colcothar rode the bucking beast like an unbroken horse, sending blow after blow deep into the shattered head. Then, like a titanic oak unmoored from its roots, the creature fell.
The crash when it hit the ground was enormous. The smoking remains of the palisade collapsed beneath the creature’s weight, sending the gates flying and obliterating the stables. The air filled with a choking cloud of ash and smoke. Colcothar leaped away at the last moment, blacking out for several seconds when he smashed into the ground. He came too, half buried in snow, before freeing himself to stagger to his feet.
He blinked and blinked again. His vision had changed to a world of stark blacks and whites. Shadowy voids opened, ready to swallow the world. The blazing white flames devoured everything and burned as brightly as the heart of the sun. Ecstasy gripped him and the chanting of the amulet threatened to overwhelm him. With darkness coursing through his veins, Colcothar felt the world tipping on its axis. Then a hand grabbed his…
‘Bastard,’ Harald mewled, more animal than man. His mouth yawned open like the gates to the pits of Hel, and a whistling scream issued from his scalded throat.
‘Die,’ Colcothar said. His voice sounded as if it had the power of a God coursing through it. In response, Harald’s body convulsed again and again, flopping and flailing like a marionette handled by a syphilitic puppeteer. His face ran like melted wax, revealing the bones of his skull. Somehow in those brief moments, Harald still lived, his staring eyes despairing, before the energies pouring from Colcothar consumed him utterly, leaving behind a cloud of ash swept away by the wind.
The dark light surrounding Colcothar deepened, reducing him to a gesticulating shadow. His shouting had devolved into an atavistic howl powered by the mystical energies pouring forth from the amulet.
‘Now,’ he howled, his voice a throbbing roar. ‘NOW!’
Cracking bolts of black light flung themselves from the amulet. Those men as yet untouched by the flames, who either futilely cowered as death approached, or still struggled on the walkways against the avalanche of creatures pouring over the remains of the palisade, were transfixed by the light.
A vast web of mystical energy spread across the camp, pulsing with a ghastly, vampiric life. It returned tenfold, just as the dying monk, in his final ravings, promised it would. The life energies of all those men, fuelled by fear and magic and the roaring inferno that had overcome the camp, all coalesced within Colcothar.
‘Damned,’ he shouted. ‘Damned to Hel itself.’
And then the wind dropped. The night cleared, leaving a stark sky of boiling clouds and the silence of anticipation.
‘Life,’ Colcothar muttered from within the swirling vortex of darkness. ‘My life and your deaths.’ And then he exploded.
A concussion of darkness burst from Colcothar in every direction. It threw up flurries of snow as a widening concentric circle of wild magic expanded in the blink of an eye, brushing the creatures of the Ice aside as the forest for hundreds of yards in all directions was destroyed. And hanging at the center of the cataclysm, supported by the death energies of the men he had betrayed, was Colcothar, glorying in the power coursing through him.
And then it was gone. Colcothar came too in a melting snow drift, the flames around him guttering away. Almost nothing of the camp remained, except blanched stumps and collapsed walls. The cabins; the hall; the smithy; the stables and the sawmill, all had been consumed by the dark energy of the amulet, which he still clutched in a death grip. Groaning, Colcothar struggled to his feet. A hundred cuts and bruises and burns marked him, and his heart shuddered. And yet, a smile, touched by madness, stretched across his face.
‘I live,’ he said, wonderingly.
And then, in the distance, deep inside the forest, beyond where the last of the fallen trees laid, he heard a renewed howling.
‘The Ice,’ he said. ‘How can…no.’ He held up the amulet and considered the squat figure’s leering features, its lips touched seemingly by a smile. Disgusted, Colcothar made to throw the amulet away, but a slow, narcotic pulse in his blood stilled his hand.
What had Harald said?
‘A village, two days away. Yes.’ Colcothar turned and whistled. Wending its way through the smoking ruins, the dog came to him. Its muzzle and throat were sodden with blood. Fondly rubbing its neck, Colcothar began the long slog south. Soon, he was running, the pounding of his boots met by the howling creatures of the Ice.
The winding of the horn began anew. A painful smile stretched across Colcothar’s scorched face. Blood called for blood…
©October 2022, Robert Mammone
Robert Mammone is a banker by day and a writer or horror and fantasy by night. He has been writing since 1989. His work has appeared previously in Swords & Sorcery.