The White Towers Read online

  ANDY REMIC

  THE WHITE TOWERS

  A BLOOD, WAR & REQUIEM NOVEL

  This book is dedicated to Dorothy Lumley, with much love.

  Dot, as the proprietor of the Dorian Literary Agency, endured many of my very first attempts at writing – giving a young, insecure, desperate author positive encouragement and advice whilst many shitty editors/agents replied with – quite frankly – embarrassingly bad photocopied “get stuffed” sheets of toilet paper (I still have the evidence, in a big stack under the bed).

  Dot was different. Dot cared. Dot nurtured. Dot loved The Business. It was in her blood, and in the glitter of her mischievous eyes. She wasn’t in it for the money. She was in it for the love. In 1996 I wrote to Dot with Theme Planet (version 1.0), saying “I think you’re the right babe for the gig”. She replied, saying she’d enjoyed the book very much and would “love to represent me”. A few years later, we had a deal with Orbit and I was a published author. Wow! Bam! Dream achieved.

  When I found out Dot didn’t have long left to live, I offered her the only thing I could think of that would really mean something: a dedication in my next novel. This one. This seemed to please her. And so, with great love, I raise a glass to Dorothy Lumley – and dedicate The White Towers to “the right babe for the gig”. Rest in peace, Dot.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Deathshadow

  From The Fire

  The Ancient

  Catacombs

  Infiltration

  Mola

  A Loving Retribution

  The Box

  The Bleak

  White World

  Zanne

  Old Evil

  Game of Souls

  Red Thumbs

  Saltearth

  The Keep

  Ghosts

  White Lions

  Endtimes

  Childhood’s End

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  DEATHSHADOW

  Iron dark clouds filled the sky. Thunder rumbled. Lightning cut the horizon into a jagged jigsaw, and hail smashed down on the broken up, earthquake-ravaged plain rippling before the walls of Desekra Fortress.

  On the battlements, a makeshift gallows had been erected. The platform stepped out beyond the primary Desekra wall, Sanderlek, giving those to be hung a generous and violently picturesque view. There were five of them. Five prisoners, each with a thick rope noose around their necks, each with a black silk hood hiding cold iron eyes and mouths set in grim lines of betrayal. Their hands had been bound behind their backs, and boots kicked against trapdoors connected to pulleys and a single brass lever.

  “The Iron Wolves have been found guilty on twelve counts of treason against His Majesty, King Yoon of Vagandrak,” read a small, pompous fat man from a vellum scroll. “These counts amount to theft, extortion, the murder of General Dalgoran, the kidnapping and imprisonment of various members of the royal family…”

  “I’ll fucking show him imprisonment,” murmured Narnok the Axeman, bristling.

  “If you hadn’t had your pants round your ankles, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” snapped Dek.

  “Thus proclaims Mr Two Kegs,” growled Narnok. “Maybe if you could hold your ale a little better, you might have heard the stampede to your door!”

  “Silence amongst the prisoners!” squawked the bureaucrat.

  “Or what?” bellowed Narnok. “You’ll fucking hang us?” His laughter roared across the walls of Desekra Fortress.

  The list of misdemeanours continued, and King Yoon of Vagandrak observed these, his prisoners, the Iron Wolves of legend and a multitude of children’s stories; the Iron Wolves who – twenty years previous – had driven back thousands of invading mud-orcs and killed the sorcerer, Morkagoth; and in these past few days, reunited in anger, hate and loathing, older, wiser, more bitter and twisted and cynical, had repeated the act of defence and attack as Orlana the Changer, the Horse Lady; had brought yet more death and destruction to the borders of Vagandrak. Only this time, the carnage had been far more terrible, incredibly more destructive; for Kiki, the Captain of the Iron Wolves, had found inside herself the buried magick of the Shamathe, the magick of the Equiem, and had unleashed her fury across the Plains of Zakora. Desekra Fortress, the Pass of Splintered Bones, the Mountains of Skarandos, and the whole world, it seemed, had trembled as the mammoth earthquake smashed through the earth, sucking down tens of thousands of mud-orcs, back into the bowels of the world that had conjured them – and dragging down the kicking, screaming figure of Orlana with a million tonnes of collapsing granite.

  Now, for risking their lives, for smashing the enemies of Vagandrak, King Yoon had chosen a simple reward.

  Death by hanging.

  “I have one thing to say,” came the demure, measured voice of Kiki. Yoon made a throat-cutting gesture, but it was too late. Kiki continued, “Orlana the Changer, the Horse Lady, is far from dead. She will be back, Yoon. Back real soon. And who will protect you from her Equiem magick then?”

  “Now,” said King Yoon, dark eyes flashing dangerously at the hangman. “Do it now. Do it now!”

  The hangman reached out and, with trembling, gloved fingers, took hold of a brass lever that operated the simple pulleys that, in turn, dropped the trapdoors beneath the hooded victims.

  There came a crack as Narnok’s ropes snapped under the huge axeman’s writhing muscles, and he ripped off his hood, unhooked his noose, and, reaching forward, grabbed the pompous little bureaucrat, dragging him into a crushing bear-hug. “Help!” squeaked the little man, Narnok’s criss-cross scarred face up close and personal as Narnok pulled an ornate dagger from a sheath at the bureaucrat’s hip. His arm came back and snapped forward. The dagger appeared, stubby and black, in the hangman’s eye, and he gurgled as blood spattered the gallows. He slid from the trapdoor handle, sinking quietly into an embryonic heap.

  “Bastards,” growled Narnok, bad breath filling the bureaucrat’s face, and, with grunt and a tug, he broke the man’s spine with an audible crack and back-handed him from the gallows where the body toppled, a broken doll, into the rocks and deep chasms yawning below the fortress wall…

  Yoon, blinking, suddenly screamed, “Kill him!” and ten of his elite guards rushed forward, led by Captain Dokta. Narnok ducked a sword-sweep, front-kicked Dokta from the battlements, and grabbed a sword by the blade with a slap. He stared into the surprised soldier’s face, kicked him in the balls, slammed the sword left, where the hilt cut a groove across a soldier’s eyes making him drop his blade and scrabble at the blood and flaps of opened flesh. Narnok took the sword’s handle, weighed it thoughtfully, then launched a blistering attack: beheading one soldier; disembowelling a second so he fell to his knees clutching an armful of his own bloody bowels, cradled like some perverse abdominal abortion; then put the point of the blade through a third soldier’s throat, skewering his bobbing apple and severing his spine so he collapsed like a sack of horse shit.

  Narnok leapt to his colleagues’ rescue, sword slashing down to cut the bonds of Dek, then Kiki, then Zastarte, and finally Trista. They removed silk hoods and loosened nooses, lifting them over their heads. Grim eyes met the soldiers of Vagandrak on the killing ground below.

  Leaping down from the gallows, they grabbed weapons from the soldiers Narnok had slain. Bright steel gleamed under the storm clouds. The Iron Wolves formed a line on the battlements, weighing the odds, then suddenly charged at Yoon, at his remaining guards. Yoon screamed, high pitched and feral, and turned, slipping, then scrambling along on his hands and feet in what would have been a comical manner fit for the stage, if it hadn’t been for five very real deadly
killers in pursuit.

  Kiki blocked an overhead sword strike, sparks showered, she punched the man in the throat, back-handed her blade across a second soldier’s thigh, cutting the leg clean off and forcing him to collapse. Then the point of the blade skewered the eye of the man before her and she was over him even as he dropped, leaping, both boots landing atop Yoon and flattening him to the ground. When the King opened his eyes, Kiki was crouched beside him, a slender dagger to his throat. She jabbed it, just a little, and blood trickled free.

  “Weapons down!” she bellowed, and gradually the fighting around stopped.

  Kiki stood, dragging Yoon up with her.

  “I’ll have you… you… you hung for this!” frothed the king, apoplectic with rage.

  “Yeah? You already tried that,” said Kiki, smoothly, and tossed her sword to Dek who caught the weapon neatly from the air and rounded on the disabled soldiers. He grinned at them.

  “Looks like you’re shit out of luck, boys,” he growled.

  Kiki got a good handful of King Yoon’s shaggy black hair and, with the dagger still spiking his throat, drew him close to her lithe, powerful body. She said, quietly, in his ear, “This is the way it’s going to play out, Your Highness. We’re going to retreat. Slowly. You’re going to come with us. You’ve made it clear you want us dead, and us saving your damned country is not something which seems to bother you. A great shame. We’d give our lives for this realm, and you’d happily take them for no reason. The point is – our backs are against the wall. So don’t think I won’t slit your fucking throat. After all that’s happened, it’d be a damn pleasure. Understand?” She shook him. “You understand?”

  “Yes, yes… it hurts, please, stop pressing the knife in…”

  “You lot!” bellowed Narnok, and the soldiers gathered below stared up at him. Some looked at their boots in shame. “We fucking fought alongside you, like brothers, we held back the bloody mud-orcs together, shoulder to shoulder, our blood mixed on the battlements. And you stand there and watch your mad bastard of a king try to break our necks!”

  Sergeant Dunda stepped forward, still clutching his axe, his bearded face lifted towards the Iron Wolves on the battlements. “Narnok, son, you can’t do it this way. You may think him mad – we may think him mad – but he’s the King, by all the gods! His word is Law!”

  “Sometimes, you have to take a stand,” rumbled Narnok, his one good eye sweeping across the gathered men.

  “Yoon will have the whole of Vagandrak hunt you down,” said Dunda, his voice level, neutral.

  “Then so be it,” said Narnok.

  “We need to move,” growled Kiki, pulling Yoon ever tighter.

  “Follow me,” said Dek, and started edging down the stone stairwell, both swords before him, his dark eyes full of murder. “Lads, you there, we’re of the same land, and I don’t want to cut off your heads; but if you force me to it, I will.”

  “Back off!” screeched Yoon. “Give them space, for the love of your king and country!”

  The Iron Wolves reached the bottom of the steps at the same time the storm unleashed a fury of icy hail over Desekra Fortress. Ice rattled across the battlements, a great sweep slamming down and playing music on armour and helmets and shields. Thunder boomed in the mountains like the clash of titans; like the end of the world.

  Kiki led the way now, with Zastarte and Trista, Dek and Narnok walking backwards, weapons bristling.

  “We can take them,” hissed Captain Dokta, dragging himself alongside Sergeant Dunda. He’d only just recovered from being front-kicked from the battlements; a fall of some twenty feet. He was lucky not to have broken his spine. “Call for the crossbows!”

  “No,” rumbled Dunda, his eyes fixed on the Iron Wolves. “Let them go. For now. Their blood rage is high. Last thing we want is a dead king’s blood and body on our hands.”

  The Iron Wolves made their way to the tunnel beneath the second Desekra Wall, where Narnok pulled across a heavy iron gate and barred it, cutting off the majority of the remaining soldiers. From there, they moved to the nearest prison block, ducking inside, Kiki coming last with King Yoon as her living, breathing, royal-endorsed shield.

  “Where now?” panted Dek, as gloom closed in. Outside, ice rattled on the cobbles and battlements, filling the world with a hushed white noise.

  “Back underground,” said Kiki, crouching to touch the soil. Her eyes were gleaming. “We head down. Into the tunnels. And get as far away from this place as is humanly possible.”

  “Human?” said Dek, raising an eyebrow.

  Kiki chuckled, but there was no humour there. “You know what I mean.”

  They moved to the back of the empty prison block, filled with an old lingering stench of urine and vomit, towards a narrow door with a winding set of stone steps that led down to the dungeons proper; far beneath the main Keep. Yoon fought for a moment at the narrow doorway, his eyes filled with dread, fingers scratching at the portal edges.

  “No. No!”

  “I can strangle you unconscious and carry you down, if you like?” said Narnok amiably, looming close, his terribly scarred face and destroyed eye like the mask of some cut-up hell demon.

  Yoon stared at him. “I’ll walk,” he said, mouth dry. “But my men – my army! – know this. They will hunt you down! They will slaughter you, like young squealing pigs in a tin shed filled with their own blood and shit!”

  Narnok slapped the king across the back of the head, nearly pitching the man down the narrow spiral steps. “If you say so, lad. If you say so,” muttered the huge axeman.

  The Iron Wolves descended… down, into the darkness.

  Into a subterranean world of shadows.

  FROM THE FIRE

  For a long time, he truly believed he was condemned to Hell. Fire roared like a furnace. Flames burned high, scorching, searing, and all he could hear was a high-pitched female voice screaming; a tortured banshee; an eldritch sound. All he could see were glowing coals, as if they’d filled up the world before his eyes – had become his eyes. And then he slowly realised that the female screaming was his own, and the knowledge filled him with a chilled terror which dropped down through his bones to his very core. Feebly, he started to crawl, over fire and glowing stone, and sensed a massive movement around him. It was the huge, burning building shifting, groaning, growling, cracking, as if this structure and the fire were titanic monsters in some incredible, slow-paced battle. But he knew the fire would triumph. It always did.

  Eventually the screaming stopped. His screaming stopped. Everything was dry, and hot, and blurred with hot mercury tears. Then the world fell away and tumbled down and darkness became his mistress.

  He awoke to the sound of running water. It was beautiful. Perhaps the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard. Music. Pure music. A symphony of Nature. And then the pain hit him, like a sledgehammer in the back of the head, and he gasped as needles flooded every vein, every organ, every atom of his body and he opened his mouth to scream, and his skin made crackling noises, and only a croak vomited out. The pain pounded him in great pulsing waves and with a sigh, he lowered his face to the frozen soil and registered a little puddle of ice, before he passed into darkness again.

  Water. The water was cool. He pushed his hands under his body, feebly lifting himself up and then forward to slump onto his chest. White. Everywhere was white. He could smell smoke. He could smell burned pork. He could taste ash. He lifted himself again, and jerked himself forward. There were bushes. They briefly registered as a flash of tangled green. He lifted himself, slumped forward. Lifted himself. Slumped forward. Every movement screamed through his muscles. Every breath tore through his lungs like hot knives. He panted, and tried to cry, but there were no tears. His tongue, a dry stalk, licked lips like ruptured bark.

  Danger. There was great danger! Men with swords.

  Fire.

  Forward. He pushed himself forward. It took a million years.

  Stars were born. Flared. And died.
<
br />   And still he pushed towards the flowing, musical stream, inching closer, and closer, and closer, and finally he reached a slope, and rolled down with a gasp through powdered snow to lie at the edge. The edges of the water were frozen, glittering like fine crystal. He could see his own breath smoking, now, and he brought his hand up to his gaze and almost wretched at the blackened, hooked claw, great cracks in the hard-cooked flesh weeping trickles of blood and pus…

  It cannot be.

  That cannot be my hand.

  How could this awful thing happen to me?

  He removed the claw from before his eyes and struggled forward, every inch of flesh pulsing him with waves of pain as if in some sick competition to make him puke. He slid over ice, then splashed into the flowing water and it was like instant orgasm. He gasped, the freezing water shocking him, and felt himself carried away, drifting away from the life-threatening danger. The men. With swords.

  The men. And a name.

  Dek.

  He choked and spluttered a few times, flapping like a stranded fish in an ironic reversal, and gasped as he went down a low waterfall head-first, splashing into the pool, bobbing like an embalmed cadaver, limbs useless and trailing as the current picked him up once more and spun him around, drifting him downstream. It seemed to go on for some time, although he sensed he was drifting in and out of consciousness.

  What happened? questioned his confused mind, over and over again.

  How did I get here? But the answers would not come, and all he could remember were men, and swords, and talk of money, then burning wood, the roar of a terrible angry leviathan, bright flames all around and screaming, screaming as his clothes burned, his beard and hair caught fire, and he ran, then crawled on his knees, then squirmed like a snake on its belly to be free of the searing heat…

  There came a gentle crunch as he came to rest on a crescent of pebbles. The stream bent here, and he had come to rest in a side-pool. He moved his arms slowly and tried to push himself up, but slumped back into the water, face first, spitting bubbles.