An upcoming sequel to my fantasy/cattlepunk novella, Remittance Witch. It’s Mad Max meets Skyrim as a Western.
Chapters will be released early via my Patreon and Ko-fi, so if the first chapter below tickles your fancy, support me to get early access to it!
Few things are feared in the Sydjords than the Draugr. The undead revenants, once men who were cursed centuries ago with an eternal life of service for the worse crimes.
Most stick to their barrows, bound by ancient magic. But some roam free, along the roads that wind through the pine forests and mountains. Avoiding fights with the military, they strike isolated farms or travellers. Growing bolder as they travel without repercussion.
This is the Ice Line Nightmare.
And Tara Heywood, a young witch apprenticing under the retired warlock Bernhard von Clief, is right in the middle of it.
First chapter
The stagecoach trundled along the road, lurching sporadically up and down in the hollows that lurked under the snow. Huddled in the armoured nest on the roof behind the cab, Nils Bandessen let his hazel eyes rove over the snow-blanketed pines that lined the roads. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something felt off about the scenery, almost as though he was being watched.
The horses at the front of the coach clearly felt it too.
“Something’s spooking them,” Lars grunted up from the cab. His brother had, as usual, bundled himself up in several extra scarves, muffling his voice to the point that only a family member could figure out what he was saying. Nils rolled his eyes, unwilling to dignify this mastery of stating the obvious with a verbal retort.
He couldn’t hear anything unusual, but perhaps the horses smelled something. He turned his attention to the light but sharp breeze that blew from behind them from Loremvik. No unusual smells assaulted his nostrils, but he found himself wishing he had bought a sheepdog when the option came up a few months ago. Mentally making a note to do so this time, he kept watch.
Nothing happened for a long while. The coach still jolted from side to side. The horses were still nervous. As they passed a milestone pointing towards Bovristead, Nils let his attention wander as he pictured them getting a glass of hot mead. Only another three miles to go – five kilo-me-tres, he corrected himself. He still wasn’t used to these fancy Imperial units.
Something nagged at the edge of his hearing, something that he hadn’t heard before. It sounded like a buzzing roar crossed with a rhythmic thump, almost like the trains that ran to Colwdvatn and outside the Fjords had been crossed with a mechanical saw. But there weren’t any tracks out here – the rich, stingy bastards who ran the railways didn’t think Bovristead deserved it, not that he was complaining about being paid to guard the mail coach.
The buzzing roar grew louder. Nils tightened his grip on the carbine he had brought as he turned to the rear, looking for any sign of whatever it was, and froze as he beheld the collection of glowing red lights. They looked unnervingly like five sets of eyes reflecting torchlight, something that had scared the crap out of him as a child.
The red eyes drew nearer, causing the horses to buckle and whinny in fear. Lars swore in alarm as he pulled at the reins, trying to regain control, but all he could do was hold on as they took off. Nils couldn’t quite make out the sheep or moose or whatever it was, but he could see large horns coming from behind the eyes. They looked far too long and slender to be moose horns, but he couldn’t think of anything-
Then he saw the riders as they drew closer at speeds that only the trains could match, and wished he hadn’t. Empty eye sockets that glowed a deathly blue above a permanent rictus, old-fashioned helmets and giant swords that almost gleamed despite being blackened by age, all in an unnaturally tall body.
“Drau – draugr, behind us!” he screamed. Even as Lars screamed at him to start shooting, he levelled the carbine and jerked on the trigger as soon as the sights landed on any of the undead riders. The gun slammed back into his shoulder, with no sign of any impact on their pursuers. With shaking hands, he broke open the carbine and inserted a new round, wondering again why he hadn’t brought a repeating carbine.
As the lead rider drew closer, waving a spear in one hand and screeching something, he finally got a good look at their steed or machine. It looked as though somebody had stretched a cow’s ribcage and shoulders over a metal barrel that had been cut in half and stuck to a block, before fastening the forelegs to a bar that ran through a giant, studded wooden wheel. A pipe ran along the side of the machine’s body and up to the back, belching out a foul black smoke unlike anything he had ever smelt.
The draugr upon the machine leered up at him as it hunched over and levelled the spear towards the horses. Faster than thought, Nils aimed again and fired. The draugr flinched to one side and nearly fell off as the bullet impacted its helmet, forcing it to slow down to recover. Another drew up and passed it, bearing two of the monsters on a longer body.
Nils fumbled another cartridge into his carbine as the second rider stood up and began to balance on the back of the demonic machine, holding onto its demonic compatriot’s shoulders. It hunched over as though about to jump, and only then did he notice the axe in it’s right hand. With horrified fascination, he saw it spring towards him from well over twenty feet away and land on the side of the carriage. Its left hand closed around one of the rails that held the rooftop cargo in place as it heaved itself up and into his face.
“FUUUUUUCK!” he screamed as he pulled the trigger. The roar of the carbine masked whatever the creature said as its right eye socket exploded in a shower of bone and skin. And then, far too slowly, its left hand slipped from the railing and the monster tumbled limply onto the snow behind the carriage.
Another machine slewed to the side as its rider tried in vain to avoid running over the body. Nils couldn’t help wincing at the audible crunch as the machine jolted upwards. His hands were still shaking, but less than before as he reloaded and aimed again.
“One mile to go!” Lars screamed from behind him. Never before had four words lifted Nils spirits so highly, causing him to grin in almost the same way as the draugr chasing them. The grin grew even sharper as his next bullet pinged off the helmet of another draugr, forcing it to pull back and hold its head in one hand as it wobbled from side to side.
And then he nearly wet himself as another draugr put on a burst of speed and tore up to the left-hand side of the coach, standing up in the saddle in full disregard of the way its steed wobbled from side to side. With a shriek of rage, it threw itself at the carriage and landed on the back not three feet away. One hand reached for and pulled out the sword on its back.
Even as he fired again, Nils knew he had missed. The beast lunged and swung its gigantic sword in an overhead motion that caused the edge to glint in the dim sunlight. Screaming and knowing that his time was up, Nils swung his carbine up and across to try and block the descending blade.
Only two things saved him. The first was the blade lodging in the gun barrel, sending a jarring shock down his arms and causing his right to buckle. And second, the carriage jolted to his right as it went over another lump in the road. Both combined to unbalance the draugr enough to make it topple to one side, towards the edge.
Faster than thought, and with more strength than he had ever used, Nils pushed from his left and tipped the draugr off the side. He grinned again, this time in wild, cruel joy as the monster landed on the ground, tumbled several times and lay still. Its steed, whatever it was, skidded to a halt on its side nearby.
“We’re almost there!” Lars called back. Nils glanced over his shoulder and, to his relief, beheld the solid palisade wall and towers around Bovristead about three or four hundred yards away. A sporadic wave of ringing bells along the walls told him that the guards had spotted them and their pursuers.
He turned back and, to his astonishment, saw that the draugr had stopped, pulling their infernal machines to the side of the road. One had the audacity to shake a fist in his direction, as though aggrieved by the fact that he and Lars had made it to safety. And then they turned away and roared off into the distance.
Nils sagged in his seat as the the gates creaked open just long enough to admit them into the settlement. Lars steered them over to the square in front of the inn, a solid wooden building that dwarfed everything in the village, where the locals were already gathering with their hodgepodge of long-arms, handguns and hand tools that could be repurposed as weaponry. One in particular stood out; while blonde hair and blue eyes were fairly common in the fjords, the seven-foot-tall frame and wooden left forearm could only be the local innkeeper.
“Lars! Nils! What happened?” he bellowed as Lars brought the panting horses to a stop.
“Draugr. Started chasing us. A mile or two back,” Lars replied. He paused for a moment as alarmed murmurs spread through the crowd. Nils vaguely wondered how long it had been since the monsters had last appeared in this valley.
“Are either of you hurt?”
“No. I think…I think we’re fine. But I need a drink. We both do.”
“Get inside then. First one’s free,” he grunted, before turning to one of the stable-hands. “Thomas! Get those horses checked out.”
Carefully, on shaking arms, Nils climbed out of the gunner’s nest and slid off the side. He and Lars stumbled towards the glow of the inn door, the crowd clearing a path.
“I hate draugr,” Lars grumbled as they slumped at the nearest empty table. Nils didn’t reply to this second mastery of stating the obvious. There was simply nothing better to say, he was too tired to say anything, and more importantly, he had a pint-and-a-half of mead to drink.
