Dark Vengeance Read online

  DARK

  VENGEANCE

  Tor Books by Ed Greenwood

  Dark Warrior Rising

  Dark Vengeance

  BAND OF FOUR NOVELS

  The Kingless Land

  The Vacant Throne

  A Dragon’s Ascension

  The Dragon’s Doom

  The Silent House

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  New York

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  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  DARK VENGEANCE: A NOVEL OF NIFLHEIM

  Copyright © 2008 by Ed Greenwood

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Greenwood, Ed.

  Dark vengeance / Ed Greenwood.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tor Book”—T.p. verso.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1766-7

  ISBN-10: 0-7653-1766-4

  I. Title

  PR9199.3.G759 D36 2008

  813'.54—dc22

  2008022148

  First Edition: August 2008

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Brian,

  Who deserves much, much more than this

  From the Land of Light to the Dark Below, Orivon Firefist descended.

  Not as a child in chains, this time, but as a grown man, hardened by years of slavery and forge-toil, and warmed by the flame of his own anger. He had escaped Niflghar enslavement, and shed blood in doing so, but now sought to rescue other slaves—and take his vengeance.

  —from The Deeds of Orivon,

  penned by Elmaerus of Orlkettle,

  (date unknown)

  From the slave pits of the Dark Below, spoken in hushed tones:

  “He fought back!”

  “He slew his overseers!”

  “He escaped!”

  “Maybe he will return. Maybe he will lead us all to freedom!”

  For the first time there is a new companion for the oppressed of the slave pits of the Dark Below.

  That companion is hope.

  From the bedrooms of young princesses and priestesses of the Dark Below, said breathlessly:

  “The Hairy One dared to escape!”

  “Our warriors could not defeat him!”

  “One of our own aided him!”

  “She was mangled and grotesque. She allowed herself to be crippled in combat—yet suffered herself to live.”

  “She allowed herself to become a monster!”

  “She used to be one of us . . . and she still lurks in the shadows.”

  “We are not safe. None of us! Not from our slaves, or our own kind—or even ourselves.”

  “Remember, she used to be one of us!”

  For the first time a blemish on Dark Below society has managed to survive, and its taint is felt by all.

  A taint, and fear!

  DARK

  VENGEANCE

  Contents

  Prologue

  1 A Face in the Fire

  2 A High Lord for Talonnorn

  3 A Vow of Vengeance

  4 Scheming, Bloodletting, and Endless Spite

  5 To Fall in a Duel in Talonnorn

  6 Fighting, Dying, and Other Diversions

  7 Talon and Fang

  8 To Bring Death to You

  9 To Glowstone

  10 Vipers Out in the Dark

  11 No Shortage of Death

  12 Why Knives and Throats Meet

  13 Watching and Listening

  14 Trying for Talonnorn Again

  15 Spitting in the Face of Olone

  16 Armies, Battles, and Revenges

  17 Great Slaughtering Battle

  18 Return of the Dark Warrior

  19 Talonnorn in Peril

  20 No One Lives Forever

  21 The Spellrobe Gone Mad

  22 Four Good Reasons

  23 Rise to Blindingbright

  Coda

  Prologue

  Fair words should be first spoken,

  but are no more than false, weak noise

  if backed by no skilled and ready sword

  and alert, firm resolve.

  —saying of the priests of Thorar

  “Sister,” Jalandral Evendoom purred, “I’ve been hunting you for a long time.”

  Taerune stared at him, her mouth dropping open in astonishment.

  Jalandral?

  Here?

  In this small, damp cavern so close to the Blindingbright, the realm of the Hairy Ones?

  Her brother took a slow, smiling step toward her. Behind him, Old Bloodblade stepped silently out of a dark side-cleft, sword and dagger raised.

  Tall, dark, and lithe, Jalandral smiled confidently, a smile that told all eyes he knew he was as deadly, fearless, and handsome as Olone ever made any Niflghar rampant. His sword looked as long and whisper-sharp as he did.

  To any eye, Taerune and Jalandral Evendoom looked like blood-kin; she was as tall as he, and—even in her weariness—every whit as fluid in her movements. Yet her left forearm ended not in an elegant long-fingered hand, but in a wickedly curved sword blade. Her other hand was now moving along her belt, seeking a dagger.

  Jalandral’s smile widened, and grew wry. “You think you’ve any hope of keeping your life, sister, if I want to take it?”

  “Do you want to take it, Dral?” the maimed, outcast Evendoom asked, her whispered words a challenge.

  “Why should I not? You are an outcast, your life forfeit. Your maiming shames us before Holy Olone, and you are insane—besotted with love for the Hairy One, the forgefist who is the valuable property of our House, and whom you helped to escape.”

  “You are wrong,” Taerune told her brother coldly. “As ever, brother, you conceal or ignore your misjudgments with style and loud overconfidence. I am outcast, so it matters not to you or any Nifl of Talonnorn what I am—when I am far from Talonnorn, in lands Talonar don’t control. No one rules these caves but the Ravagers, who rightly care nothing for the laws—and opinions—of Talonnorn.”

  “Yet behold,” Jalandral purred, taking a step closer. “Talonnorn reaches out for you, even here.”

  “Talonnorn? Or just you? Brother, does our House survive in Talonnorn?”

  “Evidently,” Jalandral sneered, taking another step and hefting his long spellblade menacingly.

  Then, swift as any striking cave-snake, he spun around, a second, shorter sword thrusting point-first out of one of his sleeves to menace Old Bloodblade, who’d been creeping up behind him.

  “Yes, fat old half-gorkul, I knew you were there,” the Evendoom lord said softly.

  Old Bloodblade snorted. “And so? You used the time that gave you to think up a clumsy insult and offer me warsteel so woefully slowly? No wonder we Ravagers slay proud Talonar lords with
such ease!”

  Despite that “we,” the longtime Ravager war captain led no one, now; his band had perished to the last Nifl. He was fat—very fat, for a Niflghar—and wore a none-too-clean patchwork of belted-together scraps of old, salvaged armor that bristled all over with the hilts and grips of heavy, well-worn weapons. He bore a broad, well-used sword in one hand, and a dagger in the other. Jalandral’s spellblade flared with awakened magic, and the dagger in the Ravager’s hand glowed in magical answer.

  “You are what you always were, buffoon,” Jalandral told him coldly. “Beneath my notice.”

  The old Ravager shrugged and strode right past the Evendoom lord, turning so as to stand between Jalandral and his sister, facing Jalandral.

  “So much is my gain,” he said gruffly. “Sadly for you, would-be kinslayers are not beneath mine.”

  Jalandral’s reply was a sneer as he stalked purposefully forward, sword gleaming.

  Bloodblade rolled his eyes, contorted his face in a broadly exaggerated imitation of Jalandral’s sneer—and struck aside the Evendoom lord’s sudden thrust.

  Jalandral hissed and slashed at the fat Niflghar, their swords clanging together. Sparks flew as both blades sang off each other in sudden blurred haste—intricate thrusts, parries, and lunges that skirled very briefly before Bloodblade flicked Jalandral’s sword up and out of his hand, disarming the young Evendoom lord with seemingly effortless ease.

  The long, slender Evendoom spellblade rang off the cavern ceiling—and fell with a crash to bounce on the stones in front of the old Ravager’s worn, scuffed boots.

  Snarling, Jalandral reached for one of the long daggers sheathed at his belt—only to flinch back as Bloodblade kicked his sword back to him.

  He hesitated, fearing the Ravager would strike at him if he bent to take it up, but Bloodblade yawned and stepped back with a bow, waving his hands at the fallen spellblade with a flourish, like a Talonar servant presenting a flamboyant feast dish. Behind him, Taerune watched in silence, her arms crossed—for all Talonnorn like a House crone watching rampants spar with practice swords.

  With a hiss of rage Jalandral ducked down, plucked up his sword, and sprang to the attack again, calling up the fire the spellblade could spit, to cook his foe.

  It boiled up, warm and raging.

  The dagger in the fat Ravager’s hand pulsed again, and an astonished Jalandral found the spellblade’s fire . . . contained!

  Snarling in its imprisonment, nigh-numbing his arm in its restless hunger . . . yet he could not unleash it.

  Hundreds of times he’d willed these flames to lash out at a foe, just as he was seeking to unleash them now, but this time, nothing happened.

  He strained, jaw clenched.

  Nothing at all.

  Humming a jaunty tune, Old Bloodblade stepped forward and crossed swords with Jalandral as if they were two House younglings being taught the first basics of blade-work.

  With a snarl of rage Jalandral struck at his foe, seeking to bind the Ravager’s blade with his own and thrust his point home, at the same time abandoning its inner fire in favor of the lightning it could also spit.

  Which awakened obediently, sending the usual thrumming numbness up his arm as he danced to one side, parrying and counterthrusting as swiftly and deftly as he could. The lightning reached its height and then roiled, caged just as the fire had been.

  Some magic in that damned dagger must be—

  Jalandral found his hand empty, and heard his spellblade clang off stone somewhere behind him.

  The Ravager had disarmed him again, just as casually as before.

  “You—” Rage making him grope for an insult florid enough, Jalandral plucked out one of his knives as he stepped back.

  “Stop posing,” Bloodblade growled at him, “and start treating other Nifl as equals. Then, perhaps, you’ll live. Perhaps.”

  Jalandral stared silently at the older, shorter, and fatter Nifl for a long time. Then he sighed, sheathed his knife, and asked, “And if I do?”

  Taerune stepped forward.

  “Then you’ll have time to listen, while we all talk,” she said calmly. “As there is much to talk about.”

  1

  A Face in the Fire

  Nightskins come and nightskins creep

  Keep your sword right sharp

  Nightskins catch and nightskins keep

  So may your sword drink deep

  —Orlkettle firesong

  “Good hinges,” Harmund the weaver said happily, moving them in his hands.

  Not so long ago he’d have said that grudgingly, if he’d have admitted it at all. Yet with the passing days upon days, Orlkettle had warmed to the terse giant who worked tirelessly at the village forge.

  Old Bryard the Smith might have been more than grudging, for the giant who called himself Firefist did better work than Orlkettle had ever seen—hinges and door-strapping and handles, not just picks and axes and war-blades. Instead, Bryard trusted this Orivon Firefist.

  By night and by day the muscled giant stood at the anvil or the forge, saying little but nodding and smiling often as he worked. More and more, Bryard sat on his own guests’ benches and talked with the men of Orlkettle, as they all watched the man of lost Ashenuld—the man who had been taken as a boy by the nightskins and enslaved in the Dark Below, only to escape alive all these years later—craft better work than Bryard had ever managed.

  And that was saying something.

  Orlkettle had been proud of Bryard, and peddlers came often to buy his forge-wares. Yet this Orivon was two clear strides ahead of the old smith in skill, and more, doing work of such strength and finish and sweeping-curves beauty that word of it had spread far.

  There had come a day when a long-bearded priest of Thorar had climbed down stiff and sore from six days on a mule to bring Firefist an old, crumbling Holy Helm in need of mending . . . and gone home beaming after his tears of joy were done. And he could bring himself to stop constantly running marveling hands over the gleaming thing of beauty that Orivon had gently set before him.

  Gently, that was the way of Orivon.

  Not thrusting aside old Bryard or anyone else, not loudly declaiming his views or his will to all Orlkettle. He chased no lasses, and calmly stepped aside from fights and provocations as though they had never been offered, answering them only with a calm, reproachful look. He dwelt at the forge, and ate with Bryard’s family or at the board of the Tranneths, who made the best kegs and barrels this side of Orlpur and rejoiced at the iron bands he made for them (and who had lost their own daughter Aumril to raiding nightskins just as Orivon had been lost, a season before he’d first stalked into Orlkettle with fearsome sword in hand and a bundle of other fine swords, all of his own making, under his other arm).

  Orivon paid for all that went into his mouth with fieldwork and repairs, like any village man.

  The village of Orlkettle had slowly lost its fear of him, and men now nodded to him in the street, and no longer tugged their children back from his reach.

  For his part, Orivon Firefist was flourishing. Arms and shoulders of corded muscle, a torso that should have been white but that was browned all down the front by forge flames and the mottled scars of many small burns, he was usually to be found stripped to the waist, poking his beak of a nose and scowling brows close to the forge to peer at red-hot metal without regard for its fierce heat.

  His height, obvious rugged strength, and oft-bare torso proclaimed who he was from afar. Closer eyes saw flowing brown hair, beard, and mustache, and a gaze that could pierce when it wanted to, and held no fear. His wardrobe seemed to consist of scorched-in-many-places leather breeches, broad belts, leather boots, a weathercloak, and little else.

  Harmund the weaver looked across the forge now, in the time of long shadows ere sunset. Orivon was patiently raking coals together to receive more wood, to make the fire hotter. When he was done, Harmund knew, he’d look up, and could then be asked the price of six hinges like the one in his hand,
and how soon they could be ready.

  Then they both heard the bells, and that unasked question was forgotten in an instant.

  Many fine bells all jingling in rhythm meant a peddler signaling his arrival in Orlkettle, bringing wares and news.

  An excited murmur arose all over the village as Orl-folk came out of their houses; Harmund the weaver was at the forge-door staring out in an instant.

  “ ’Tis Ringil!” he called back over his shoulder, forgetting that Orivon hadn’t been in Orlkettle for many seasons. “Years, it’s been—and no wonder. He goes to Orlpur, and ports on the sea beyond, too!”

  Orivon nodded, unhooked a chain above his head to let the great lid down on the coals to smother them, and stalked to the door.

  In the long golden light of the dying day, the village square was crowded. Many Orl-folk were converging on it from all directions, calling greetings and questions as they came to a small, hunched man who was busy with his mules at the water-trough. As they watched, he swept off his feather-adorned cap and set it on the signal-fire dome with a flourish. When he straightened up again, Orivon got a good look at him. The peddler had a weathered, wise-eyed face and a pepper-and-salt beard. He wore a smart black jerkin with scarlet piping; it looked like the uniform of a courtier or a ceremonial guard—which is just what it was, though Ringil had never actually been a member of that court guard. Not that either guard nor court existed anymore.

  So much Harmund told Orivon ere they joined the crowd. Ringil had hung his strip of bells and was now hobbling his train of a dozen mules. He’d already reached down a folding table from among their bulging saddlebags, and set a lantern on it to be lit when dusk drew down. “People of Orlkettle, I bring you treasures from afar! Fine things,” he said jovially. “Wondrous things!”

  “Flashy dross,” Dorran the miller called out, just as pleasantly.