The Codex Lacrimae: The Book of Tears

Chapter 18: A Day's Black Fate, Thwarted

Morpeth moved with unbelievable speed at the Codex's invitation. He attacked Fenris first, swinging upward with a short rod that he'd been holding at his side. The silver-capped length of dense wood erupted into crimson flame, and Aurelius recognized the danger before Fenris did—Morpeth was expertly wielding a three-balled, spiked flail! The burly man lurched backward as one of three leaden maces collided into his nose, knocking him briefly into Skade.

The Huntress didn't fall, though, and one of her arrows glanced off the padded shoulder of the Huntsman's black Hospitaller short-cloak. Instead of falling, Morpeth jerked outward with the rod, letting the three chains attached to the spiked balls whip their lengths around Traeg's staff. He yanked, just as the orange light of her spell began to flare up her weapon.

The reddish flames of his chains snapped the wood of her crozier with a shattering sound. She staggered backward, her hands splayed forward as she tried to begin another incantation, but it was too late. The Huntsman reversed his wrist and pushed forward, savagely clipping her jaw with the butt of the flail. She dropped onto the shore and didn't move.

As Morpeth landed, he spun, brought another flail in his left hand to bear, and feinted at Andvari with a laugh before dodging a bolt of lightning that erupted from the brass tip of the arch-mage's staff.

The distraction of using a second flail worked. Andvari hesitated for a second too long, and the crimson flaming chains in the fire-demon's right hand whipped around the dwarf's staff like a bola, the spikes of the burning mace-spheres coming dangerously close to the wizard's eyes. Morpeth came in low, spinning, and as he'd done with Traeg, cracked the heel of a flail into the side of Andvari's head. The wizard screamed in pain, his head snapping backward as he, too, fell without breaking his fall to the sands beside his wife.

When the arch-mage's staff began to fall, Morpeth dropped one of the flails, leapt at the staff, caught it and, without looking, reversed its tip behind him at waist-height. The hard thrust caught an attacking Skade in the abdomen. She stumbled away, gasping for breath, as Fenris caught her and lowered her to the shore before beginning his transformation into a wolf.

All had occurred within a few seconds. Morpeth dropped Andvari's staff and stretched out his hand, and the flail and chained mace attachments flew back into Morpeth's hand. He crouched in front of Mimir and the Norns, slightly rotating his wrists so that the mace balls made circles of brilliant red fire in the air to each side of him.

The flames of the lake flared, the white changing into the shimmering colors of the rainbow. The transformation caught Aurelius's attention. He glanced at the Well of Mimir and found himself gazing into the heart of a radiant star. Distracted, he didn't move quickly enough to prevent Skuld from making a mad dash toward Morpeth.

She took a strange angle, though, and Aurelius paused, frowning, while the Norn of the Future stumbled into the shallows of the pool and crashed headlong into a sprinting Clarinda.

That wasn't an accident, Aurelius observed coldly. He moved to flank Clarinda's exposed side as the Venetian fell toward Morpeth. An instinct born of hundreds of battles made him look to the other two Norns. Urd was moving to help Clarinda but Verdandi was backing away from the pool.

What's going on here? The knight wondered. Do those two want both Urd and Clarinda to die?

The Hospitaller needn't have worried about the latter two women. Clarinda used the momentum of Skuld's collision to turn her own fall into a half-flip roll, launching herself through the air with a sailor's grace that brought her solidly to her feet in the middle of the well.

Nicolo never got that move right, and Alexios was still struggling with it when we left Tomas's monastery that last summer, he thought, strangely proud of Clarinda even while running to her other side where he could help her best.