The Hammer and the Blade Read online

  PAUL S KEMP

  The Hammer and the Blade

  A Tale of Egil and Nix

  Praise for THE HAMMER AND THE BLADE

  "Most heroes work up to killing demons. Egil and Nix start there and pick up the pace. There's enough page-turning mayhem here to sate the most avid sword & sorcery fans, but the heart and strength of this story is a friendship that goes deep and rings true."

  – Elaine Cunningham, author of The Thorn Trilogy

  "This rollicking tale hooked me from the get-go. Told with zest and humor, this is everything that is good and golden about classic old-school fantasy yarns. It joins my precious bedside shelf of favorite re-reads, 'comfort food' books I turn to again and again. Egil and Nix might not be the safest guys to go adventuring with, but they're sure good company. I'll be waiting for a sequel. Impatiently."

  – Ed Greenwood, bestselling creator of Forgotten Realms

  For Jen, Roarke, Riordan, and Lady D.

  My guiding stars.

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About the Author

  Also by Paul S. Kemp

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  Nix studied the sanctum's door, a large slab of black metal featureless save for the narrow gash of a keyhole. Intricate stone reliefs of land lampreys and sand serpents – creatures deemed holy in ancient Afirion – lunged from the door's posts and lintel, the ropes of their serpentine bodies entwined in a chaotic swirl of fangs, bulging eyes, and implied violence. Afirion pictoglyphs covered the walls, the black, gold and turquoise ink telling the tale of Abn Thahl's life.

  Nix put his hands on his hips and stared at the door as if he could will it open, like one of the mindmages of Oremal.

  No luck. He frowned, looked over at Egil.

  "No rust on a door more than six centuries old. Odd, not so?"

  Egil sat on the floor with his back against the smooth sandstone wall, his twin hammers, both goresplattered, lying on the stone floor to either side, his legs stretched out before him. Sweat collected in the fringe of black hair that ringed his head above the ears. Blood – but not his own – speckled his thick forearms.

  "Odd, aye," the priest said, worrying at a wound in the tree trunk of his leg. The tattoo inked on his bald pate – an eye looking out from the center of a starburst, the symbol of Ebenor the Momentary God – stared at Nix while Egil looked down. "Can you open it?"

  The question jabbed a finger in the eye of Nix's pride. He turned to face his friend, his own finger pointed like a loaded quarrel at the top of Egil's head.

  "Perhaps one of the zombies struck the sense from your head? Can I open it? I? You may as well ask can a whore hump, or can a wizard dissemble. These are things intrinsic to their nature. Can I open it? Hmph."

  "There you are," said Egil, ignoring Nix's tirade. He brandished a sliver of bloody obsidian he'd plucked from a small gash in his left thigh and squinted up at Nix, brown eyes all innocence. "You were saying something about a wizard humping locks?"

  Nix crossed his arms over his chest and glared. "You heard what I said, whoreson."

  "I heard," Egil said, with a longsuffering sigh and a weary nod. He held the sliver of stone close to the lantern for a better look. "Look at this. It's a piece of one of the zombies' blades."

  Nix and Egil had pulped a score of the undead creatures – onetime temple guards animated to unlife by the wizard-king's sorcerers – on their way through Abn Thahl's tomb.

  "You may have heard but you didn't reply, so let me restate. Are you acquainted with a door I couldn't open? I press the question only to illustrate your softheadedness, as demonstrated by a faulty memory. It's important that you understand your limits."

  Egil tossed the sliver to the ground, tore a strip of cloth from his shirt, and pressed it to his leg wound. "There was that time in the Well of Farrago–"

  Nix shook his head emphatically. "That was not a door."

  Egil looked up, thick eyebrows raised. "It had hinges, a handle. It opened and closed. How can you say–"

  "It was a hatch."

  "A hatch?"

  "Of course it was a hatch, and only a fool priest of the Momentary God would confuse a door with a hatch. A hatch is a different thing from a door. A hatch can be troublesome. You see? Does having an eye inked on your head make your other two blind, or otherwise detrimentally affect your cognition?"

  They stared at each other for a long moment, the lantern light flickering over their faces.

  "Well enough," Egil said at last. "It was a hatch."

  "Now you're mocking me? I hear mockery."

  "I'm not. I'm agreeing. I said it was a hatch." Egil stood, tested the leg, and seemed satisfied.

  "I heard the words," Nix said, waving a hand as if to fend off a buzzing insect. "It's the tone that bothers."

  Egil opened his mouth to speak but Nix held up a hand to stop him.

  "Leave off. We both know the truth."

  He turned back to the door, muttering, more determined than ever to get it open. He eyed it from different angles, examined the stonework around it. There were no hinges, so he surmised it opened with hidden counterweights. Holes bored into the pale stone above the lintel caught his eye. They'd been filled with plaster long ago. Perhaps sand had been poured into the chamber beyond after the door had been sealed? He'd seen such things before.

  He went down on his belly, saw that the bottom of the door sat flush on the floor, sealed with a thick layer of tar or something similar.

  That he'd never seen before, and it puzzled him.

  Perhaps to prevent blades from being stuck under? But why?

  "Maybe try to pick the lock?" Egil offered.

  Nix answered with an obscene gesture.

  Egil grinned, bending his wounded leg. "Your pride is too easily tweaked. And I make that point only to illustrate the fragility of your ego. It is, after all, important to understand your limits."

  Nix stood and offered the obscene gesture with both hands.

  "And so my claim is validated," Egil said. The priest took his yellowed ivory dice from the pocket of his trousers, shook them in his hand.

  "Must you?" Nix asked, knowing the answer.

  "Yes."

  Nix reached out slowly toward the door, stopping a finger's width from its surface. He waited, waited, and after a moment, the hairs on his forearms rose. He looked knowingly at Egil.

  "You see? Warded."

  "Well noticed," Egil said. "Your education at the Conclave wasn't wasted. Now what?"

  "Now this," Nix said, and unslung his leather satchel of needful things.

  Within the satchel he carried his tools, both precise and blunt, the enchanted items he'd acquired through purchase or theft, together with sheets of parchment, sticks of chalk, a vial of ink, quills, and anything else that seemed to him likely to be of use on an expedition. It also held his collection of keys, both mundane and enspelled.

  "One of your gewgaws?" Egil asked. The priest stepped to his side, eyed first the door, then the contents of the satchel.

  Nix rifled through his various keys – all of them purchased in the Low Bazaar or found on ex
peditions – until he found the one he wanted: a small brass beauty, with a thin tube for a blade and a beaten copper coin for a bow. He held it up for Egil to see.

  "My gewgaws, as you so roughly call them, have saved us more than once."

  "That's truth," Egil acceded. "But the odds of that key working in an Afirion tomb are about as good as finding a virgin in the Slick Tunnel."

  "Or, one might say, about as likely as finding a priest possessed of wit."

  Egil chuckled. "Nice."

  Nix smiled in return. "And this isn't an ordinary key. I purchased it in Dur Follin's bazaar from an agent of Kerfallen the Grey Mage. It opens wards, not doors."

  "Hmm," said Egil, squinting at the key. "I pray it's so, though I credit the agents of wizards not at all." He bowed his bucket-sized head reverently, putting the eye of Ebenor squarely on Nix.

  "Alas, I credit your prayers still less. Ebenor isn't called the Everlasting God, my friend. The Momentary God was divine for… a moment."

  Egil's eyes moved off, grew distant as they did when he discussed his faith, when his thoughts turned to the events that had brought him to a life of religion. "Lives are made of moments, Nix. You know that."

  Nix heard the seriousness in his friend's tone, but the door had left him irritated, so he did not tread as lightly as he ordinarily would.

  "I do, but Ebenor's dead, so there are no more moments left to him. He can't hear prayers, my friend. And you're his only worshipper as far as I know."

  Egil smiled through his beard and adjusted the mail shirt he wore. "That makes me high priest, not so?"

  Nix already regretted his jab. "I guess it does. Pray, then, high priest. Can't hurt."

  While Egil murmured a prayer in the coarse syllables of his native tongue, Nix spoke a word in the Language of Creation to awaken the magic of the key. When it warmed in his hand, he pointed the open end of the key's tube at the door, drew his punch dagger, and lightly tapped the key's end with its point.

  The key vibrated, lightly at first, then more strongly, emitting a prolonged chime that would have done credit to the Great Clock of Ool, the sound reverberating through the large underground chamber, the echo replaying itself again and again. Loose sand misted down from the ceiling blocks.

  The metal warmed between his fingers, and, as the sound faded away, grew hotter. Nix held on as long as he could then dropped it with a curse. It hit the floor, flared white, and melted into slag.

  A wet slithering and high-pitched shriek spiked his adrenaline and jerked his head up. He caught a flash of one of the stone lampreys carved in the door jamb, now made flesh and as thick around as his forearm, lunging at him out of the stone, the black hole of its mouth ringed by a vicious sphincter of fangs.

  He stumbled back, trying to brandish the punch dagger he still held, but he was too slow, and–

  Egil snatched the creature out of the air in mid-lunge and slammed it to the ground. It writhed frenetically in his grasp, hissing, attempting to twist enough of its body free to latch its teeth onto his flesh. The priest pinned it with his boot.

  "Your blade, Nix!"

  Nix recovered himself, jerked his falchion free of its scabbard, and cleaved the lamprey in half. Its pieces squirmed for a moment, spurting stinking black ichor, before going still and reverting back into two chunks of stone.

  "Fak," Nix cursed, his heart still racing. He sheathed the punch dagger.

  Egil removed his boot from the creature's body and eyed Nix.

  "You see?" the priest said, kicking one of the pieces of the creature across the sand-dusted floor. "Moments, Nix. Life and death are experienced in the moments. We just had one."

  Nix thumped Egil on his huge shoulder. "Point taken. Thanks."

  He took a moment to let his heart still, then held his palms before the door once again. He waited, but no longer felt the tingle of an active ward.

  "The key dispelled the ward," he said.

  "Bah!" Egil answered. "The key activated the ward. We could've done that ourselves."

  "I blame your prayers."

  "And I blame your 'magical' key. Perhaps a chat with Kerfallen's agent is in order when next we see him?"

  "Agreed." Nix rubbed his nose thoughtfully. "Though, in fairness, it wasn't a very expensive key."

  Egil chuckled, started rattling the dice in his hand once more.

  Nix kneeled before the door. "Shine the lantern's light in the keyhole for me."

  Egil pocketed his dice, held both of his hammers in one hand, and with the other angled their lantern so that its light reached into the key slot.

  As Nix removed his precision tools from his satchel, he realized of a sudden that he didn't particularly care if they found the serpent idol within the sanctum. He and Egil had set off from Dur Follin after a three-day drink, in the midst of which they'd bought a "treasure" map from Crustus the blind cartographer. Crustus, in turn, had received the ancient yellowed vellum from a teamster who'd taken it as payment for passage from an Afirion nobleman fleeing dervish assassins. He and Egil had followed it on a drunken whim.

  He held his pick poised before the slot. The moment felt portentous. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. "Remind me again what we're doing here, Egil."

  Egil's bushy eyebrows rose to a precipitous height. "I'm standing here on a wounded leg. You're picking a lock. We're both overdue for beer."

  "Don't be a bunghole. I mean, what are we doing? Here. Now."

  "Here? Now? Are you daft? We're retrieving a serpent idol from the tomb of the wizard-king Abn Thahl."

  Nix leaned back on his haunches, tapped his lockpick on his cheek. "Right, right, but why? I remember wenches and boasts and… not much else."

  The observation seemed to flummox Egil. His brow furrowed, his cheeks darkened. He shifted on his booted feet. The light from the lantern cast crazy shadows on the stone wall. He ran a hand over his tufted scalp.

  "I don't recall. I think… we were quite drunk and… I remember being in the Slick Tunnel but… I guess coin?" He looked up as if he'd had an epiphany. "The idol must be valuable, eh?"

  "We've got enough coin stashed around Dur Follin to keep us in wine and whores until we're too old to appreciate the pleasure of either. Not to mention the markers we hold."

  Egil tilted his head to accede the point. "True. So?"

  "So, indeed, is the question." Nix studied his wire pick, thoughtful. He did not remember what they'd been thinking exactly. They'd dodged the Demon Wastes and taken ship across many leagues of the Gogon Ocean to reach Afirion, braved the desert, thirst, the traps, and undead guardians in the tomb for… what? Coin they didn't need?

  Perhaps they'd done it so often in the past that they did it now with no forethought, no real purpose, automatons who went through the motions of their lives because they didn't know what else to do or why else to do it.

  "We could go back," Nix said, looking up at the towering priest. "Right now."

  Egil's expression twisted uncertainly behind the nest of his beard. He chewed the hairs of his mustache. "Why would we do that?"

  "Why not? If life's made of moments, here's another one. Feels important. We could use it to leave."

  Egil's dice came back out of his pocket, rattled in his palm, his habit when thinking or nervous.

  "We could." The priest ran a hand over his bald head, poking Ebenor in the eye, his other habit when nervous or thinking. "But… we're already here. Be a waste to just… leave, wouldn't it?"

  Nix supposed that made as much sense as anything. He nodded. "I suppose. We're here. Why leave a deed half-done?" He turned back to the door. "Hold the light steady."

  Peering inside the keyhole, Nix found the lock less complicated than he expected. The ancient Afirions had been expert stonemasons but inexpert locksmiths. His wire pick, sawblade, and tumbler pry would have it open in a moment. He set to work and quickly had the lock primed.

  "Ready yourself," he said to Egil. The dice disappeared and Egil hung the lantern from a protub
erance in the mural-splashed wall. The big priest filled each of his fists with the haft of a hammer.

  Nix released the final tumbler and heard the satisfying click of an opening lock, a sound that always felt to him like… opportunity. Nothing pleased him more save the opening of a fetching girl's thighs.

  He bounded back to stand beside Egil, holding his falchion and hand axe.

  Somewhere within the walls, pulleys squealed, the sound like a scream. Counterweights descended and the door started to lift, metal shrieking against stone. Immediately liquid poured out from the widening crack and an acrid, eye-watering stink filled the air. All in a rush Nix knew he'd missed it.