DAIN RUTTERKIN

Part Two: "The Black Sword"

DAIN RUTTERKIN

PART TWO: THE BLACK SWORD

GONDOLIN

His name was Gondolin, called of the Onyx Brood. And he did oversee a brood of a sort, a dark brood of spies and assassins in the employ of Nial Cerberim, King of Tyrantium. For some twenty years had he served his master in this role. But he had served him long before that, aye far long before that.

They had met on a battlefield in his youth, a blood-drenched field south of the Sogthiri Moor, when His Majesty had been a mere soldier in the service of his best friend and then liege Bramuin Thales. At the time the soldier now called Onyx-Brood had been just that, a mere soldier, holding the lines of pikes with his fellows against the encroaching Sogothian horde bent on overrunning the Rivenlands.

Gondolin had certainly stood out amongst his fellows. Nial Cerberim, then Lord of the Riven and the tallest man Gondolin had ever met aside himself, came merely to his shoulder. The Broodmaster was seven feet at least by the measure of any stick, and over three hundred stone even as a youth of nineteen summers. It was hard not to notice him in the thick of that sticky, sodden bog melee, spearing the dark-skinned hordesmen on his pike before foregoing ranged impalements for his great sword, with which he hacked and clove with three times the speed, the ferocity, and ruthless cruelty of his fellows.

His commander had made it his business to get to know a slayer of Gondolin's special quality, and not twenty years later Gondolin had arrived. Cerberim's most trusted assassin, Gondolin stood in the shadows behind his king ever-ready to be dispensed to the most harrowing of duties. And why not? For his duties most often involved the slaying of men, which Gondolin could not deny, he loved as he loved his own mother.

This task, however, was different. And the frigid wind bit at his nose, reminding him of that. He secured the balaclava of dark wool more closely about his face, so that only his eyes, the bridge of his nose, and that thin strip of flesh traversing the organs were left exposed to the elements. Despite its relative proximity to the warm spring winds of the Tyrantian Steppes, the air about and buffeting the stark white face of Mount Caina was always frigid; it lost none of its deathly cold on its journey south from the Land of Blood and Ice, where no man could survive more than a mere moment's exposure. He adjusted his burden upon his back, which was so heavy, even for a man of Gondolin's thews, that he had foregone his own weapon and left it behind at King's Hold to ease his burden. Wrapped in furs and strapped to the rucksack on his back was a great sword, black as pitch and evoking a gravity and heaviness such that it felt to weigh thirty stone if it was a pebble. Gondolin could not grasp it — how could a greatsword, not dissimilar in length and breadth to his own headsplitter, be so heavy? How had Bramuin Thales wielded the fabled thing in combat? He could not see, for although the Thales legendry made much of the supposed shared lineage with the frost giants of Arcturus, Gondolin was a giant in point of fact, and for the life of him he could not hold the thing well enough to swing it properly, even two-handed. Perhaps the blade knew its own, as some of the ravings claimed. In any event, it would not have Nial Cerberim as its wielder — the king had claimed the weapon burned his hand when he gripped the hilt, and he had shown Gondolin the marks. Hence the fur wrapping.

The giant wiped coppery strands of hair from his face, lank and with sweat and then fast-frozen. Despite his bulk and his own layers of furs and hides, he was freezing. Only midway up the winding corkscrew trail, an exposed knuckle of one massive paw beneath a worn hide glove already blistered with the telltale gray-pink of frostbite. Gondolin massaged the digit, trying to restore blood flow. The winds of Arcturus whipped about him and his great bear hide cape flapped behind. Cerberim had been good to him from the first. He recognized in Gondolin a soul twin of sorts — both fed, meat and drink, on the savage joy of combat and victory over the enemy. But this... Perhaps the king could be persuaded to enlarge the fief of his most devoted servant, assuming he returned from his task alive and absent an iceberg for a heart.