Chapter Forty-Six Guthnyr
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Guthnyr
“I thought getting over the wall would be the hard part,” Sygurn grunted, using his shield to slam a hammer-wielding old man into a post before finishing him with an axe blow.
Surveying the surrounding carnage, Guthnyr dragged air into his lungs, tasting the mingled scent of voided bowels and blood that accompanied every battlefield.
The assault against the walls had indeed been far easier than expected.
The charge of the Tielvik’s menda had met only a thin volley of arrows and sundry missiles.
Having scaled their makeshift ladders to the battlements, they encountered only scattered opposition.
The warriors they fought were much the same assemblage of callow, panicked youth and occasional resolute veteran they had faced upon emerging from the Shadow Track.
But they were too few in number to present a serious obstacle.
Guthnyr’s odd alliance of Morvek, Travka and freed slave was soon flooding the western precincts of the Citadel.
Guided by Deyna, who had insisted on staying at his side for this battle, Guthnyr began making his way towards the hill in the city’s centre.
Here the Vortigurn’s hall rose in inelegant majesty, a tall thin tower rising from the muddle of mismatched buildings.
They advanced with Halvor’s company of outlaws, followed closely by Sygurn and Aleida.
Guthnyr had left Behsla and Jolnyr atop the hill beyond the walls.
They were instructed to guard Ryma and the other children, but in truth Guthnyr had determined not to risk their lives this day.
Jolnyr accepted the order with typical silence but Behsla objected, although Guthnyr could tell from the stutter of her protestations that she was forcing the words out.
Both had done their share of fighting throughout this campaign, but the bloody and blasted aftermath of what the Travka had taken to calling the Battle of the Storm, had plainly left a mark.
He saw it in their eyes and the twitch of their faces, the signs Felnir had always told him to look for in veterans.
Even the hardiest, bravest soul will one day have their fill of war, his brother had warned.
When it happens, best to just let them rest.
For a time it seemed they might enjoy an unimpeded advance to the Great Hall, but any such hopes were dashed when the first mob of townsfolk came at them.
The subsequent melee left three outlaws dead and a score of poorly armed corpses upon the cobbles.
From the uproar echoing through nearby streets, it was clear the entire city had risen against them.
Refusing to be daunted, Guthnyr led his people on, encountering more scenes of havoc along the way.
It took a rapid and demoralising toll upon the Travka.
Having crested the wall, many expected a bout of easy looting followed by prolonged celebration.
Instead they found themselves mired in a fight for survival against an enemy who seemed to lack all reason.
“Sorry Tyrnlohk,” a man from one of the eastern clans told Guthnyr as he sped by. He bled from a recent wound to his forehead and had a collection of silverware clutched in his arms. “But this is just fecking madness.”
Several more loot-laden Travka pelted past until the object of their fear came into view.
Guthnyr’s party had reached a circular plaza forming the crossroads between five separate streets.
Rising from its centre was a tall bronze statue on a marble plinth.
Guthnyr recognised the subject as Trieya Vorlspeld, the Moon Shadow, the Altvar of the Upper Hall with dominion over the stars and navigation.
Beauteous and regal, the goddess stood with her face and arms raised to the heavens as, from the surrounding streets, a tide of ravening humanity surged in a seething, murderous mass.
Guthnyr’s first instinct was to retreat, but a glance over his shoulder revealed another mob assailing Halvor’s outlaws from the rear.
“The statue!” Guthnyr called out. Pushing Deyna towards the monument, he lingered to hack down a screeching old woman who tried to brain him with the flaming hot coal she clutched in her scorched hands.
Rushing to the plinth, he hauled himself up alongside Deyna.
The others did the same as townsfolk closed in like a plague of rats upon a fresh corpse.
Screaming their ugly chorus of enraged hate, they clawed at the legs of their intended victims, heedless of the blades that hacked them away.
Looking down at the roiling sea of deranged faces, Guthnyr saw not a single glimmer of humanity in any eye.
“Another Ventra at work,” he observed to Deyna.
Pausing to slash her long-bladed dagger at a clawing hand, she glanced up at the tower rising from the Vortigurn’s hall.
It loomed tall only a few streets away, but, given their current predicament, may as well have been on the moon.
“I’m not so sure,” she said, voice barely audible above the mob’s mad babble.
“If any of his servants was capable of this, I think we would have seen it before. This…” Grunting in annoyance, she jerked back from another flailing hand before slicing its fingers away. “This may be something else.”
The weight in her voice caused Guthnyr to also look up, finding his attention captured not by the tower but by the storm gathering in the sky above it.
The ominous swirl he had noticed after the Battle of the Storm had formed into something the like of which he had never seen before.
His time at sea had left him well acquainted with ugly weather, but the way the clouds moved, creating a spiral around an increasingly dark centre, was both too orderly and too threatening to portend a mere tempest.
His rumination came to an abrupt end when the plinth swayed beneath him, jostled from its foundations by the weight of so many bodies. One of the outlaws lost his grip on the statue and fell into the mob, instantly disappearing beneath a mass of flailing limbs with a brief, despairing shriek.
“Get back y’mad feckers!” Sygurn cursed, one hand clutching the goddess’s calf as he wielded his axe with the other.
His blows raised repeated fountains of blood that did nothing to cow their attackers.
Bracing his back against the bronze effigy, Guthnyr swung Kohrvayl two handed, scything down three or four townsfolk with every swing.
But there were always more. He stopped upon feeling the plinth shudder as something gave way beneath it.
The statue teetered backwards then forwards before, with a sibilant crunch of fragmenting stone and a squeal of protesting metal, it began to topple.