Chapter IX:
Buck and Green-Churl
Kurt rode into the wasteland only for a few minutes, returning as the quickore tugged at him ten miles out.
The tower was far off, cast in that thick haze and unseen at most outward glances.
As Kurt returned to the ship, Embla had found no success in even minor repairs.
“We’re still tied to Etzel’s body...tied in the ship,” she said. "Could we let him out?" said Kurt, knowing full well the answer.
Unwinding the bundle of quickore thread tied within the busted obelisk, Embla looped it around the belly of Canute.
They rode off for half a day in gray haze, Canute gliding over the miserable wispy shards that once were mighty sequoias.
Nightfall approaching, Canute’s pale dead eyes were aglow like lantern light in the mist, guiding them forward, never slowing.
Embla slept, her head snug against Kurt’s back. He felt one of his strange comforts with her touch upon him; comfort from that strange lady who days before chased him with murderous intent. Kurt commanded Canute to halt, then setting up camp around a jagged snow-wan tree stump.
He planted Deathbrand into the dead soil as a camp stake, reckoning this would be the last time they would rest before meeting the tower.
They drank little, their water reserves low, food nothing but a few pieces of dried meat from Subohemia (which Kurt did not care to ask the origin of). Embla was silent, exhaustion finally having taken ahold of her unbridled character.
“We must be close,” he said to an unresponsive Embla,“I estimate there to be twenty miles more before we reach the tower and…”
Embla rose to her feet.
Kurt looked into the mist.
His pulver ear pricked to the sound of heavy breathing; scratching.
Both the breathing and scratching came from behind the stump, from a mighty tall thing; neither Kurt nor Embla could have anticipated what lurked in the dark.
Kurt plucked Deathbrand from its post and circumabulated the camp, carefully listening for any other sign of the breathing, scratching thing.
He raised Deathbrand high, its candlelight flickering. Through the flames, he caught a glimpse of the thing's face.
It opened its mouth as if grinning.
The thing was taller than Canute, standing on four legs, long curled horns were its crown; white in fur except for a spot of red bleeding from its side: it was an exceptionally large bighorn sheep.
Kurt wondered if it was simply a large animal or something more, an ettin-deer, a calculating and conspiring thinking-beast ready to pounce and devour them both.
He drew his arquebus. This sheep could also be mutton.
The bighorn leapt high over the stump and Kurt’s head, casting itself 20 feet forward.
It landed in front of Embla and the ship, letting loose a defiant snort.
Kurt loped back to camp to see the creature eyeing the ship, leaping over it, then landing on the taut string between Canute and the ship’s interior. It balanced on the quickore cord like a tightrope for a moment more before bouncing off it and landing, facing Kurt.
“Buck?? Buck! Where are ya, Buck?” A voice from the haze called out, a hefty baritone of a voice full of warmth yet commanding and authoritative. The bighorn sprang off into the haze beyond the camp.
The voice called in surprise: “Buck! There you are…my what is all the hustle about? Can’t catch up with ya…Ah…there, over there is it? What? A Yottin camp? A tribe of Volltrolls?”
Buck sprang back into the camp. Following him came a man, a giant of a man, his face a ruddy color, his long beard and hair greenish and mossy. He was clad in grizzly bear pelts from his shoulders to his boots. Clipped to a purple belt around his narrow waist hung a glimmering silvery axe. Quickore, thought Kurt. “Why, a happy evening this is; a terribly lucky one!” said the man with a beaming smile.
“You two, I know well, though we have never had the pleasure of introductions yet…but wait…something is amiss: a young miss!”
He counted the two and said, ”You two and the horse of Todteld. There should be three according to the errandghosts…”
“There are three,” said Kurt. “Our other companion is held captive in the ship”
The giant man nodded. “A captive? Could it be the miss? The Herrenhausen girl Verity? I have been delivered much ill-news of her happenings for many years...”
“No, it’s not her,” said Kurt.
“The ghosts do not lie...it must be her...Who then? A Yottin?? Ah, they have sent their lackeys, their vermin volltrolls about this great forest…now, see: see what they have wrought! Gaze upon the once majestic Sequoia Forest!”
“They cut it all down...” said Embla cooly.
“No!…far worse...my axe fells a thousand trees every day…why? The volltrolls poisoned them, the mammoth trees, turned them all into semi-trees, pseudo-trees…using glammercraft, the mammoth-trees began to breed unnatural beasts, serpent-worms by the millions…a veritable pest! A terrible pain it brought to me to fell so many of these ancient trees, but the worms were innumerable…even now, they slither, especially at night.” “Terrible…” said Kurt, “Volltrolls I imagine is Varglish for vaighling? And Yottin is Ettin?” “Riktig thu ert,” said Embla in an affirmative fluent Varglish sing-song.
“Yes, Varglish, Inglish, I use many words, many tongues I read and come across,” said the man. “I read much of what the Spellgesith has composed: he that great poet who rhymed the world into being, the Creative Spark, and the Great Scribe immortal, eternal. Collecting, transcribing his poems: that is my life’s purpose."
“What is your name, sir?” asked Embla in such a polite tone it struck Kurt as unsettling.
“I am Grimnar, but you knew that already. And you I too know: Duchess of Herrenhausen-South, a mistress of that troublesome clan who has brought much woe upon our world…but you’re different, yes? Or do you carry out your clan’s perverse intentions with glee? Speak up and speak to truth.”
Embla muttered something only Grimnar could hear, before the giant nodded and said, “Is that all? Speak all truths clearly now.”
Embla spoke again close to the feet of the man. Kurt heard not a word she uttered, for as she spoke, he fell into a trance: He saw a man in red robes, his face kind and boyish. Three others stood behind him: the trio of little shadows.
“Who are you??” he called out to the watchers. "You have followed me for years and not said a word! Are you friends--- or fiends!"
The trio and the one in red vanished.
Kurt’s vision returned to the camp.
Embla dried her face.
Hot tears fell from her big dark eyes, trickling along her cheeks.
"Who was that...lady. That Lady in purple?" she said, choked up.
Grimnar looked to Kurt, saying: “She has revealed all that weighed heavy in her heart…And you, man you who wield the Yottinslakter Doedbrand. Will you speak your truth? Your burdensome blade will become even lighter…so is its nature, a soul-antenna, a conductor of the energy of life and death…!”
Embla looked to the aircraft.
“Poor Etzel,” she said softly.
“Yes, I agree, after what you explained to me, this Bodyguard is in serious danger..." said Grimnar. “He has been trapped in there for far longer than any man ought to be…a prisoner of the ghouls who haunt the wasteland.”
Kurt raised his voice, an urgency in his speaking "Poor Etzel?...Grimnar, may I say…first, my truth: I am Kurt Eisenforst, son of Carolus Eisneforst.”
“Indeed,” said Grimnar, “And you were also the apprentice of John Ormsvard, yes? Meant to come meet me here seventy years ago.”
“You know much of our personal histories, Grimnar. You must also know that Etzel Galvan hates me; wants to kill me. He believes I am responsible for the death of his beloved Verity.”
“Yes, he refuses to listen to the truth,” said Grimnar. “He was trapped inside that cage to protect you…but there is another motive of his imprisonment…a motive that hadn’t been revealed by this lass until just a moment ago…”
“We can’t let him out, Kurt…he’s been taken by Azza," said Embla sullenly. "I did it...for him. I was his mistress. His thrall."
“Azza,” repeated Kurt knowing well of that awful name from John’s stories.
“He goes by many names…Unghost, Archfiend, Perverter of Man, Master of Corruption...” said Grimnar.
“So, let's save Etzel now! Set him free from the cell!” said Kurt.
“We are able to open the door,” said Grimnar, “But the question is, will he come forth willingly? Yes, Lady Herrenhausen has revealed that this ship contains a gate, a world inside a world, a place where one hour spent here is a year there, a day is a century, and a century here an aeon there,and so on. It has been, we figure, more than a thousand years spent inside that cell for Mr.Galvan; one thousand years have been spent by that man under the influence of the Unghost.”
Kurt’s heart plummeted into a deep chasm. A thousand years???
“I’m sorry…” Embla said. “I deserve to be punished…drowned in the Bloodfirth.”
“Hush, girl,” said Grimnar. “I have already given you your new task. You can’t alter your past, but you can rectify the path you have forged for yourself and others! Listen: we are being watched. Volltrolls and Yottins scour the land and sea…but here you two are, bearing the Heirlooms of King Rammbock! And look here: mine own inheritance.”
Grimnar flashed the axe to them.
“It’s the Weever’s tail…yes, we draw nearer to his return to flesh…”
The haze consumed them that night, and no one slept, except for Grimnar.
When the great man of the woods awoke, Kurt told him his story, his life his regrets and trespasses.
Grimnar, listening intently said,“You speak to the truth written in the Spellgesith’s Book…Come, you are worthy of wielding the staff of the Master of Death, a life lived as yours as seen so much misfortune. Rest, weary one.” Kurt slept at the man's word. Embla curled up beside Grimnar’s bearskin coat and nodded off soon after. The erst-mistress of Azza Unghost looked content and youthful: a great burden had finally been lifted from her guilt-ridden heart.
+++++
In the morning, Buck, bleeding heavily and fatigued, laid down before them and died.
Hastened by Grimnar and hunger the trio made a fire and cooked and ate him.
Grimnar, tears in his eyes took Buck's bones and cast them into the fire.
They carried on along the way to the tower, not speaking a word ten miles out.
Then, through the mist came a figure, horned, tall and mighty and leaping.
“Buck! Buck! There you are!” exclaimed Grimnar.
“There you are you leaping prince, you king of the forest forever and ever.”
Embla stared queerly at the beast. “It’s him? Again? Did we not just eat him?”
“Yea,did we eat him. But listen to the words I speak,that endure within this misty mark here, and till the end of all time, listen as I speak little, but read from the Book of the Spellgesith and ponder on its story often: this Bighorn is no true creature, no common beast of burden as you or I are. He gives and gives again his flesh to be consumed again and again to all those on this winding road. Look upon your old selves: the yottins have manufactured a false-immortality through their foulest of machines and now, their bodies wither and tremble and need more and more living flesh...else they will be turned to dust or be recycled into a new false body, malformed again and again—made dead again and again. But Buck...Buck was sent to me long ago to sustain me with his meat in those days before King Rammbock Oreld would again appear-Rammbock King tamer of the damned.”
Grimnar took a knife from his royal purple belt and punctured the Bighorns’s side. Reaching into its flesh he procured a golden orb, emitting a fragrant smoke from its slits. It was of quickore, a weevernish heirloom.
“The Heart of Rammbock,” said Kurt.
Grimnar returned the heart to Buck, no wound detectable other than his blood-daubed fur.
Kurt and Embla marvelled at the Bighorn, springing ahead of them.
“Come: beyond this mist is the way to my old home, for a century occupied by volltrolls.”
They saw it then: tall trees, the once great sequoias, all diseased and pale; vestiges of the forest. Grimnar cursed in an ancient guttural tongue and said, “The sick-forest is thick here…I fear I will need to fell many trees before we reach my homestead.”
Chapter X: The Countess, the Vaighling and the Three-Faced Prince