Four Thousand Days by David Guymer

Author:David Guymer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2017-12-12T13:32:31+00:00

‘On the three thousand, three hundred and thirty-first day, there was fire…’

The Angfyrd Odyssey

It was a commonly held belief that Fyreslayers did not feel the heat. Dunnegar knew it was untrue. Rather they endured it, like duardin. However, in this unending land where fire fell as rain and rivers boiled whilst somehow remaining liquid, endurance alone could carry them no further.

‘See that mountain over there.’

Killim’s voice was a dry growl. He lowered his flame-­discoloured book tiredly and pointed into the distant haze.

The landscape was one of interconnected lakes stretching out towards a promissory red shimmer. Fire swirled across the surface of the water, reminiscent of the pattern of currents, but elementally subverted. That air was still and heavy. Cinders drifted. To describe the combined effect as a heat haze was inadequate. This place was heat. The very land was hazed.

And as far as Dunnegar could see, there was no mountain.

He shuffled back around on his metal stool. It was squat, of Angfyrd make, and hotter than all the hells. He endured it. His left arm roasted similarly on a portable anvil, his bicep bound tightly. He grunted, distracted.

‘No.’

‘There. No. No, wait a moment…’

The battlesmith scratched his dried brow and turned back to his book. It lay open on the back of a wooden cart containing the lodges’ treasures and that the Fyreslayers took it in shifts to pull. It was a straightforward, two-wheeled contraption with a low base built for low country. The wood came from trees that grew natively here, and as such was remarkably tolerant to the heat. The lodges had acquired it and two others like it several years before from a nomadic human tribe in trade for fyresteel weapons. There had certainly been plenty of those to go around since the battle against the Griever, too many to be carried by the few still walking. Hence the need for carts. Now, only this one remained.

A poor trade then, and one bemoaned constantly by the runefather, Nosda-Grimnir.

Running his finger along the map, Killim squinted towards the distant range, then did a double-take between the hellish topography in front of him and the ancient map on the page.

‘I’m sure of it,’ he muttered. ‘The river we followed had to be the Infernum. It had to be. And these are the first mountains we’ve seen.’

‘If you can call them mountains,’ said Solldun, runesmiter of the Sepuzkul lodge, absently.

He was runemaster now in all but name, but the honorific was as yet unearned, and he resisted it. Killim grumbled under his breath and returned to his maps as Solldun made some tightening adjustments to Dunnegar’s restraints. With roughened fingers, the runesmiter felt the muscles of his arm. Exposure to so much ur-gold had built them up hard and massive, but at the same time twitchy. Dunnegar’s muscles flexed painfully as the runesmiter’s fingers walked down to the wrist. Solldun closed his eyes and muttered half-remembered instruction, nodding as his fingers turned back to press down on a spot a thumb’s width up the berzerker’s forearm.

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