The Frozen Tomb

The sky overhead was lit with shimmering fire, here in the uttermost north, under the black sky at the end of the world. Sethrus waded through snow as deep as his knees, cold and shaking, burning inside with the iron determination which had driven him this far. In his hand the black sword of the dead star glowed and sang to him, whispered of all that he would become if he would only follow the song of blood.

Grimly, he shut his mind against the power of the sword and fought his way on, looking up to the ice-armored ridges above him, watching for signs of the savage men who lived in this terrible place. The Ankou guarded this part of the world, as they had for a hundred generations, ever since their black king had been entombed here, sealed in his frozen crypt. Sethrus knew more of it than any other living man, for only he had been inside the tomb, and now, after many years, he returned.

The wind howled and he thought he heard dogs howling behind it. He knew he was pursued, and not only by the Ankou. Here in the long night of the world, where the mountains howled with frigid wind and the peaks danced with green stormfire, his fate would be decided. He knew he would die, that was not a question in his mind. All that remained was how he would give up his life. He gripped the hateful black blade in his hand, and forced his way onward.

The path rose, cutting through the rock, all of it covered by ice sculpted by the unending wind. He passed through an arch made of black stone and entered a hollow sheltered from the wind, snow sculpted into waves like the surface of a frozen sea. Broken pillars thrust up through the ice, and he knew he was close, now. Once a great necropolis has stood here in this place, a city of the dead, consecrated to the warriors of a black and terrible empire. Now, all that remained were the cannibal Ankou, degenerated from their former glory as the world turned cold and buried their lands in ice.

He stood in the starlight and the glimmering sky-fire and he saw them now, on the ridges above him. They stood wrapped in hides and furs so that they barely seemed human. They brandished spears and rough-hewn iron axes, and they bellowed their fury to the sky. Sethrus did not know what their words mean, as no living man spoke their language. It was as lost as their history, save for a few ruins guarded by bloodlust.

The sword shivered in his grip, and he heard it whispering in his mind, as it ever did. He looked down, seeing the exquisite work of the hilt, twisted gold and black jewels that gleamed with violet radiance. The blade was long and made of a single piece of black crystal like nothing else upon the earth, for it was said it had fallen from the sky itself, a shard of a dead star cast down by the gods. The edge was jagged and seemed to glow, and he knew it was unbreakable, and sharper than any sword ever dreamed to be.

It hungered for blood, always. He felt it crooning to him, a voice only he could hear. The sword ached to kill, to feed. It made him mighty, a killer above all other men. For twenty years he had slain and conquered with it, had carved out a bloody path through history. Forever after, men would remember the name Sethrus with a shudder and a sign against evil.

Filled with dread, He heaved the sword up over his head and gripped the long hilt in both hands. He felt the old strength flow through him, the power of the sword. It wanted to seduce him in all the ways it had, all the wiles it possessed. He showed it to the Ankou, and they howled with rage to see the sword of their dead king in the hands of an outlander, and they came for him.

The Ankou were towering men, almost giants, and they seemed to loom against the stars as they closed in around him. The sword let loose a howl that only he heard fully, inside his mind. His enemies perhaps felt a shiver in their boned, behind their eyes. He saw them hesitate as they came close, and he knew that of all men, these knew what the sword was capable of.

They rushed upon him with axes and spears ready to strike, and he swept the sword in among them with both hands, fighting to control it. The black crystal edge was sharper than dreams, and it cut through hides and scaled armor and flesh as easily as air. He saw the blade rip through them, and they came apart, blood spattering in the dark air, and then the sword began to feed.

Sethrus felt it like the pull of a lodestone, but it was no start the blade reached for, it was blood. He saw the black gore drawn through the air, from the steaming snow and gaping wounds. It flowed into the black shard blade and vanished, devoured, swallowed, and men screamed as it feasted upon them. He turned and met the crush of spears, the black edge reaving through wood and iron, scattering the pieces. He struck again, and the voice of the sword swelled in his mind, luring, pulling him, like music enticing him to dance, but this dance was slaughter.

A blow crashed upon his helm and staggered him, but the unquiet strength of the sword was in him, and he could not be stopped. He fought blind, barely feeling the blade cut and bite, smelling the hot copper reek of blood as the unnatural sword drank. He whirled and struck around him, unseeing, and he felt the warmth in him, in his own veins, and he shuddered and retched in loathing.

He cut down six, then nine, and when his vision cleared there were only three left. He was marked by a few small wounds, but even now the stolen blood of the sword pulsed through him, filling the wounds, stanching them and leaving him heavy and sated, yet craving. The sword was always hungry, and while he gripped it, so was he.

The last of the Ankou stood close together, watchful. The dead lay heaped around him, shattered and cut into pieces. They lay white and bloodless, their wounds like raw meat. Their flesh steamed in the frigid air, and the sky-fire glimmered in their dead eyes.

Sethrus pointed the sword at them, and he trembled. It lunged against his will like a feral hound at the end of a leash, yearning to kill. Only the will bought through long years of familiarity allowed him to control it. Fed, it was stronger, no longer like a sleeping beast in his hand. It lashed to be free.

“Stand aside!” he shouted at them, clinging hard to the edge of his control. “I have not come to kill you. Don’t. . . don’t make me kill you!”

One of them replied, but he did not understand their tongue. No man did. He swallowed, chest burning from the cold air. The sword wailed in his mind and he closed his eyes for a moment, grimacing. “Go!” he almost screamed. “I cannot hold it forever!”

They spoke among themselves, and then, as one, they charged. Sethrus howled in frustration, and he almost tried to throw the sword away. But he knew. He knew not one of these men could control it, not enough to do what must be done.

The first one died in an instant, his head swept from his shoulders. The blood jetted upward in a double fountain, and then it curved back down and fed the sword. A twist of his arms cut the head from the axe that came for his face, and then he ripped the sword through the man from hip to shoulder, let him fall in pieces.

The last man brandished a steel sword, but it did not match the black sword any better than a wooden spear-haft. Sethrus sheared the blade in half, and then he drove the dread sword through the man and pinned him to the frozen earth. He felt the shudder and the heat as the blade devoured his blood, drinking it from his very heart. He looked into the man’s eyes as his mask fell away, revealing his rough and tattooed face. A last breath ghosted from those dead lips, a whispered word that he could not know the meaning of.

The sword clawed at his mind, urging him to turn, to follow the paths back down the mountainside to the warm lands, where there was blood to be harvested, glory to be won through killing. Sethrus ground his teeth and fell to his knees in the snow, hands clutching the hilt of the death-sword. He fought against the will of the thing, until at last he dragged himself to his feet, and struggled onward, upward, toward the frozen tombs.

o0o

He knew he was followed, and not by the Ankou. No. He smelled horses in the bitter air, and he knew the men who followed him were those who would call themselves civilized. They were his enemies, his victims, those who had sworn their blood to kill him for one of a thousand crimes. Rivers of blood had flowed under him, and kingdoms had burned at his command. Sethrus knew whatever they wished, it was no less than he deserved.

Yet he fought on, clawing his way up the mountainside, squinting against the hell-cold winds that clawed at him. He would never return to kinder lands, never see the sun again, or feel the waves of the sea. He knew that as a certainty. But he would make certain of one thing before he ended. He would be sure that the black blade of the frozen king would never again arise in the hand of a man.

A fissure lay before him in the black stone of the mountain, and he remembered it. He was close to the place he sought now, very close. He staggered within, glad of the respite from the wind. The passageway appeared as a natural formation, but that was only because of the weight of years since it had been hewn from the rock. He saw here and there the reliefs carved upon the stone, covered in ice so they glowed in the witch-light from the sky. In niches cut into the walls he saw the frozen mummies of the heroes of the ancient race. Guardians left here to prevent any from defiling the royal tomb. They had not stopped him in his youth, and they did not stay him now.

The crevice opened up and the sky lay above him, alight with green and azure fire and deep with stars. He looked up into beauty, glad of it now, at the end. Now he walked down a long ravine, and the stone beneath his feet became more and more regular, until he trod upon an ancient pathway. It led him to a small flight of steps, and at the top awaited the black gate of the ancient crypt. The tall, gleaming gates, etched with hideous faces to frighten away grave robbers, stood as he had left them when he was so much younger. The left one was still ajar, revealing a shard of blackness within.

There was a hiss and then an arrow snapped against the stone beside him. He turned and saw a body of men hurrying up the pass after him. More arrows clattered around him, and one glanced hard off his helm. He grunted and the sword pulled, willing him to turn, to kill, to feed it.

He wrenched away and staggered up the ancient steps, slipping on the ice. He heard shouts and curses, and he wedged himself into the open door. His armor caught on the glossy stone, sparks grinding from the steel, and then he was through, into the cold hollow of the tomb. His breath was a cloud before him as he felt his way through the darkness. Pillars loomed on all sides of him, sheathed in ice that glittered like diamonds. There on the floor were his own footprints left from twenty years ago, marked in the scattered snow.

He followed the pillared hall through the dark, until the roof overhead blazed with light. All of ice, it caught and refracted the starshine and the glow of the northern skies, and here beneath that strange illumination he turned at bay and faced his pursuers.

Archers came first, lightly armored, seeking a target. Sethrus used the pillars as cover, ducked out of view when they loosed. Arrows splintered against the ancient, ice-armored stone. They were well-trained, and they kept in a knot so he could not pick them off one by one. But they could not hit him, misjudged distances in the weird light, and then they did not draw back when they should have.

Sethrus lunged out and caught them unawares. One put an arrow through the mail at his shoulder, and then he was among them. The black sword reaped three of them down, sent the other three scattering. They were exhausted and cold and hungry – it did not take very much to break their courage. He paused to rip the arrow out, teeth grinding at the pain. But then the heat of stolen blood filled his veins and wiped away the wound.

Even as he turned a wave of swordsmen crushed in upon him, and there beneath the frozen vault of the roof Sethrus fought his last battle. There were a dozen men, and only the hardest had endured the chase. Their faces were reddened by cold beneath their helms, and their breath came out in clouds like smoke. They rushed him with sword and shield and axe, and he set hands to the sword he hated and cut them down. No armor, no steel could resist the black crystal edge, and he sent men to the cold stone cloven into pieces and trailing blood.

Their very numbers drove him back, his armor hammered and dented by blows. Blood flowed across the floor, trailed through the air to feed the sword, and he felt the terrible vitality of it grow in him, a flood-tide cresting higher and higher. He saw nothing but red, barely felt the blows that rang on his helm and cuirass, did not know when his mail was rent and his flesh wounded. The power of the sword filled him up, hateful and endless.

When six of them lay dead and bloodless, the other six gave back, gasping for breath, looking on the black sword with a horror new-born in them. They had heard the tales, but they had not seen, not until now.

Sethrus reeled back, and fetched against the stone slab of the final crypt, shoved aside by his own hands so many years ago. Every vein and nerve screamed for him to kill, to loose the sword upon them and finish them to the last. He gripped tight to his own will and held the blade up before him, saw them draw back from it.

“I would not slaughter you, all of you. Stay back, and turn and go to whence you came! For if you challenge me, you shall die!” He shuddered with the effort to control the urge to kill. Like a word he could only just keep from uttering, it trembled on the edge of release. Like holding his breath, straining against the will of the sword.

A dark figure stepped out of the shadows, into the ghostly light. He wore black armor chased with gold, and his long sword was of fine dark steel. He had a cruel pale face and black hair, and every crime man can commit against another seemed etched on his features. “I have broken your armies, Sethrus,” he said. “I have broken kingdoms. I have left a wake of destruction behind me. And now. Now all I have left to break, is you.”

“I know what you want, Neros,” Sethrus said. “I know you want the sword.”

“Of course I want the sword,” Neros said. “I have fought and killed and bled to reach it, and I will have it. No matter where you try to hide it. It will be mine.”

“You don’t know the cost,” Sethrus said, his voice hissing and strained. “You don’t know what it does. Inside. Inside your mind. It’s always there. Always here.” He touched his temple. “It never ceases, never falls silent. Blood it wants, and blood it calls for, day and night, winter and summer.” He looked at the blade and yearned to cast it away. “If you take it up, you will be sorry you did.”

“Sethrus,” Neros said, shaking his head. His face was confidence and cruelty, and Sethrus knew he would not make him see. “You had your fun with it, built your kingdom, conquered and destroyed. Now, if you are done, I will take it. It will be my turn.” He held out his hand. “If you want to be rid of it, then simply give it to me.”

“No one shall have it,” Sethrus said. “No one.” He backed away from them as more men came into the hall behind Neros. There was no way now but to where it began. He stepped back through the door of the tomb, and into the darkness.

o0o

They came after him, shouting and calling for torches. This final hall was dark and close and cold, the pillars carved into the walls looming like giants. In this place, Sethrus had the advantage. They thought he fled them, so he met them inside the door, and the black sword sang with joy as he set it loose upon them. Blood flowed and fell and was devoured, and men died screaming as they felt their lives eaten away.

They crushed him back with numbers, hacking at him, pressing him down. They forced him to the floor and their fingers tried to pry the sword from his grip, but he was filled with the strength it gave him, and he threw them off, cut them down. Driven back, he left a trail of dead down the long way to where the stone sarcophagus lay frozen on the floor. The lid still lay open, forced back by his own hands when he was young and a fool. Beyond the tomb he had not dared to venture, for there was only a black void cavern cut deep into the mountain, and from it now a howling wind began to blow, cold enough to steal his breath.

He left dead men sprawled at the foot of the sarcophagus, and then he passed it, retreated into the blackness. Fallen torches guttered and hissed on the icy floor, giving only bitter and dying light. None dared to follow him save Neros, and Sethrus did not wait for him, only reeled onward into the unseen hollow, the will of the sword grown large with all the life it fed on. It pressed inside his mind, and he yearned to simply let go and let it work its will.

Sethrus staggered down the dark passageway, and then he emerged into an open space so vast he could not encompass it with his mind. It was a crevasse in the mountain, cut so deep the glacier above long ago roofed it over. He stared at the depths beneath him, layered with mist that glowed with a phosphor light. The wind from the deep was colder than ice, colder than anything a man could feel. It burned his lungs, and he fell to his knees.

“Give it to me!” Neros gasped behind him, following close, alone. “Give me the sword!”

Sethrus trembled, knowing if he killed one more time, then the blade might have, at last, the strength to overwhelm him, to take his mind away, as it had in times before. It might wipe him away, and he would awaken some other time, dazed and blank upon a path of the slain.

Neros came closer, and closer, his sword ready, and Sethrus drew back his arm and cast the cursed blade into the abyss, the song howling in his mind, fury and frustration. It faded away until it was finally gone, a poison drawn from his mind.

Neros howled with rage and rushed him, and Sethrus rose and met him with only mortal strength. He felt so weak, so slow, and he was shocked by how much of his strength fled with the sword. He caught the hilt of Neros’ blade and they wrestled for it.

“I will kill you,” Neros spat in his face. “I will kill you!”

“I came here to die,” Sethrus gasped, feeling weakness steal over him, as though he were made of straw. “But you will not kill me.” The cold was depthless, and they both felt it bite into them. “This is where it was born, do you feel it? This is where the dead star fell, and below us it lies, dreaming and hungering.” He gripped Neros and dragged him to the edge, and at last his enemy seemed to understand.

“No! No let go of me!” Neros fought to get free, and Sethrus laughed.

“All the black things I have done, all the dead, all the enslaved. Now at the last I will do a thing. I will die a hero, where no one can see.” Sethrus gripped tight to his foe, and with a last cry, he hurled them both off the edge of the great abyss. The wind howled around them, tore them apart, and Sethrus had a final sweet moment to witness the terror on his enemy’s face, before he fell away into darkness, and was gone.