by Warhammer
The chase through the darkened castle had ended in Hugo’s bedchamber, where she had always known it must. That, after all, was the place where it had all begun. He had bolted himself inside and howled for the gods to save him. She had splintered the door with one kick of her armoured foot and strode in like an avenging daemon.
The place looked much the same as she remembered it. The same huge bed dominated it. The same fine Bretonnian rugs covered the floor. The same stags’ heads and hunting trophies filled the walls, along with the same pennants and weapons. Only Hugo had changed. The intense thin-faced youth had grown into a blubbery man. Sweat ran down his jowled cheeks. His face looked babyish even as the eyes squinted in terror. Yes, he had changed. Another might not have recognised him after so much time but Justine did. She would never forget his eyes, those glassy eyes which had followed her from the very first day she had arrived in the castle, over seven years before.
A long sword was grasped awkwardly in his pudgy paw. He raised it feebly and she effortlessly batted it aside, sending the blade spinning across into the corner. She put the point of her sword to his chest and pushed slightly. He had been forced to back away until he had tripped over the foot of the bed and lay sprawled on the sheets. The smell of excrement pervaded the air.
The bloated pink maggot wet his lips.
‘You are going to die,’ she said.
‘Why?’ he managed to gasp. She removed her helmet then. He moaned aloud as he recognised – at last – her face, her long distinctive hair.
‘Because I told you that you would, seven years ago. Do you remember? You laughed then. Why are you not laughing now?’ She pushed on her blade a little harder. Blood blossomed on the white silk of his shirt. He stretched out his hand in entreaty.
For the first time in years, tears of passion stung her eyes. She felt again the hot surge of rage and hatred. It raced through her veins and transformed her face into a mask. She pushed the sword down, revelling in the shock of impact and the clean slice of hell-metal through flesh. She leaned forward, pinning him to the bed where he had forced himself upon her seven years before. Once again blood stained the sheets.
She had surprised herself. After long years of planning so many, slow, deliberate, delicious tortures she had dispatched him with a single stroke. Revenge had seemed less important somehow. She had turned and left the chamber and went to oversee the sacking of the town. She had ignored the pleas of the two men that the beasts were raising on the gallows in one of their incomprehensible macabre jokes. It had been down there, in the village, that she had encountered the child.
She strove to forget the child.
‘You should not have spared the girl, beloved.’ The daemon allowed a hint of its anger to glitter in its voice. The promise of eternities of pain emphasised its every word.
‘I did not spare the child. I left it for the beasts. I am not responsible for the slaying of every dreary village urchin.’
The lash of the daemon’s words stung her. ‘Do not lie, beloved. You spared it because you were too soft. For a moment you allowed mere human weakness to stay your hand, to push you from your chosen path. That I cannot allow. Nor can you, for if you change course now you have lost everything. Believe me, if you let the girl live, you will have cause to regret it.’
She looked up at it then and, as always, was struck by the thing’s polished, chitinous, beauty. She saw its black armoured form, the brutally beautiful face glaring out from beneath the rune-encrusted helmet. She met its redly glowing eyes and saw its strength. It knew no weakness, no mercy. It was without flaw. One day she could be like it. It plucked the thought from her mind and smiled in apparent pleasure.
‘You understand, beloved. You know the nature of our pact. The path of the Chaos Warrior is but a trial. Follow the path to the end and you will find power and immortality. Deviate from it and you will find only eternal damnation. Great Khorne rewards the strong but he abhors the weak. The battles we fight, the wars we wage are but tests, crucibles to burn out our weakness and refine our strengths. You must be strong, beloved.’
She nodded now, hypnotised by the beauty of its molten voice, seduced by the promise of knowing neither pain nor weakness, of being flawless, perfect, of allowing no chink in her armour for the horror of the world to seep through. The daemon reached out with one clawed hand and she touched it.
‘An age of blood and darkness is coming, an era of terror and rage. Soon the armies of the four Great Powers will march forth from the polar wastes and the fate of this world will be decided with steel and dark sorcery. The winning side will own this world, beloved. To the victors will belong eternal dominion. This planet will be cleansed of filthy humanity. We shall remould everything in our own image. You can be on the victorious side, beloved, one of its privileged champions. All you must do is be strong and lend our lord your strength. Do you wish that?’
That moment gazing into the creature’s burning eyes, hearing the silken persuasiveness of its voice she felt no doubt.
‘Do you wish to join us, beloved?’
‘Oh yes,’ she breathed. ‘Yes.’
‘Then the child must die.’
Justine marched through the crowds of her followers to take her place on the carved wooden throne. She placed her bare blade across her knees, confronting the mightiest of her followers, the gors. The sword was a reminder to them all of how she ruled here, a naked symbol of her power. She had the favour of their daemon god and the expression of that favour was her might. The beastmen might not like it but they would have to tolerate it until one of them could, according to their primitive code, best her in single combat. And none would challenge her if they had any sense: they all knew of Kazakital’s prophecy, made when she had been elevated to the ranks of the Chaos Warriors. They all knew what the daemon had said – that no warrior would ever overcome her in battle. They had all witnessed its truth. Yet they were beastmen, and challenging their leader was an instinct.
This night she almost hoped that one of them would try; the bloodlust was strong in her tonight as it always was after she confronted her patron. She glanced at what the beastmen rested upon: a huge tapestry she remembered once covering an entire wall. It depicted scenes of battle and hunting from Klein’s family’s past. Now it was covered in mud and leaves from the floor of the forest glade and the filth of the beastmen’s own excrement. She would order it burned. She wanted nothing left to remind anyone of the Klein family.
Seeing the huge animal-headed forms of her followers lolling on Lord Klein’s favourite possession was a reminder to her of how her world had changed since that fatal morning when she fled Hugo’s chamber into the depth of the woods.
The scene that confronted her now was like something from the nightmare engravings of the mad artist, Teugen. Great horned animals clad in armour walked among the twisted trees of the darkened forest. They looked like an evil parody of the chivalric ideal, an upset in the natural order of things, as if the brutes of the forest had risen to oust upstart man. As one day they would. The servants of Chaos would send all the kingdoms of men toppling into the dust. She had made a small start here. It would grow. As word of her victories spread, more and more servants of Chaos would flock to her banner. Soon she would have a great army and all the might of the Empire would tremble. Somehow that prospect did not excite her as once it would have. Disgruntled, she pushed the thought aside.
She gazed on the captains of her future army and wondered what orders she should give them. She ran her measuring gaze over them, wondering when and from where the challenge to her leadership would come from. It could be from any of them. They were all gors, the largest and most powerful type of beastman, and the most violently ambitious.
She saw posturing Hagal, his goat-horns burnished with gold, his brilliant blond fur gleaming in the firelight. Of all the beasts who followed her she thought him most likely to challenge her, to instigate the Clashing of Horns. Her spies told her that it was he who grumbled most loudly around the campfires, c
omplaining that it was unnatural to have a female lead them. He was the most surly, always questioning her orders but never to the point where she would have to initiate the challenge. At the moment, though, he was biding his time until perhaps she weakened. If it came to a fight now he knew that she would win.
Against Lurgar she would have been less certain of victory, had it not been for the prophecy; the great red-furred bull-head was the most savage of her warriors in battle, a blood-drinking berserker whose appetite for carnage was exceeded only by his hunger for man-flesh. He was a deadly fighter when battle madness came on him. She almost feared a challenge from him, but thought it unlikely unless someone put him up to it. The man-bull was too stupid to have much ambition and was content to follow any leader who promised him foes to face and food to eat. Not a leader himself, he would be the perfect tool for someone to rule from behind.
Beside him sat one who obviously thought so: the old shaman, Grind. For a beastman, Grind was clever, possessed of low cunning and much of what passed for learning among the warped ones. He could cast bones and read omens, talk to spirits and intercede with the Ruinous Powers. In the time before Justine came to power it had been he who made the sacrifice to the Daemon Prince, Kazakital. But the fat, white-maned bull was too old now to father many sons in the Great Rut and so could not become leader of the warband. Justine knew it didn’t stop him from resenting her pre-empting his position of spiritual authority in the tribe or simply hating her for being female. Justine could not afford to underestimate him, that much she knew. The shaman was full of spleen and malice, and his words swayed many of the rank and file beasts in her army.
Tryell the Eyeless was no real threat; a great warrior of heroic stature but marked by warpstone. He had no eyes, yet he could see as well as anyone. As one who had been marked by Chaos he had a great fear of Justine, who he saw as specially favoured by it. He lived only to kill and add new eyes to his collection.
Then there was Malor Greymane, whose father she had killed to assume leadership of this horde. If the youngling felt any resentment he hid it well. He followed her instructions to the letter, fought well and exercised sound judgement. Often his plans were better than those of war-leaders twice his age. He was already a great warrior, although not yet come into the full strength of his prime. Let the others grumble that he was a member of the council only because of his friendship for her. She knew that some had even been whispering the abominable lie that, secretly, he was her mate. She knew that he had earned his place on merit and his position was justified by his prowess.
Of all those she commanded, she felt she could place a measure of trust only in the black-armoured Chaos Warriors that she had recruited in the Wastes, long before she had returned here. They were sworn to her service. In a way she wished they were here now, to provide her with a measure of support, but they were not. This evening they were off in the depths of the woods, performing their own rites, propitiating the daemonic engine which they crewed with blood and souls, making it ready for the hard battles to come.
The beastmen looked up at her expectantly, a half-circle of animal faces whose eyes held both human intelligence and inhuman lusts. She was suddenly glad that her blade was easily accessible. She felt isolated and out of place here. As always, before she began the council she felt a sense of anticipation. Would it happen now? Would the challenge come?
Justine wondered what orders she should give them. She had never thought past this point. The doubts that she had felt earlier returned, redoubled. She had lived for her vengeance. Now that it was achieved she felt empty. When she spoke to Kazakital it was easy to be firm of purpose, to feel allegiance to his cause. The Daemon Prince had an almost hypnotic effect on her. But when he wasn’t there, doubt set in.
She wondered whether she wanted what he wanted. Her major purpose had been achieved with the death of Hugo.
It was simply the fulfilment of a long-held desire that left her feeling so, she told herself. For seven years she had been driven by her desire for vengeance. Now it had left her, snuffed out with the life of her tormentor. It was bound to leave a gap after so many years. She forced herself to concentrate, to feel the desire for power and immortality that came so easily in the presence of her daemonic patron. She managed to summon up a faint shadow of it. It was enough.
‘We have destroyed our first victims,’ she said to them, voice strong. ‘But there is one survivor. It is ordained that she must die. Our master demands it.’
‘Should find other man-places. Kill more,’ Hagal said, glancing round with his golden eyes. ‘Why worrying about one survivor?’
Grind tapped his wand of carved human thighbone on the flagstones. ‘Let them live. Spread word to others. With word comes fear. Fear is our friend.’
Always this constant testing, she thought. Always this constant circling and searching for a weakness. Even simple matters became minor skirmishes as the beasts sought to enhance their status at the cost of others. Their society was based on a hierarchy of strength; showing weakness, any weakness, diminished prestige.
‘Because our lord demands it. Because red Kazakital, Chosen of Khorne, says we must.’
Malor turned his grey gaze on Grind and Hagal. ‘And because our leader, Justine, demands it!’
‘Who are you to question what our leader demands?’ Tryell asked directly of Hagal. So the rumours of bad blood between them were true. Good. It strengthened her position.
‘I do not question our leader. I question need to find single human when could find dozens more. Are you so anxious to find girl because you spared her last night?’
‘Who told that?’ Tryell said, too quickly. ‘Do you seek challenge?’
Justine sensed that Tryell was trying to cover this up, not that she cared. She, too, had spared the girl. Or was this what Hagal was getting at? Was this a subtle criticism of her? It did not suit her to allow the fight to continue. If Tryell killed Hagal, fine; but if it went the other way she would have one less true ally among the beasts’ leaders and she doubted if she could find a replacement.
‘There will be no challenge,’ she said softly, but loud enough to be heard by all present. ‘Unless it is with me!’
The gathering fell silent, waiting to see if anyone would call her to the clashing of horns. She saw Grind lick his lips in anticipation. She locked glances with Hagal. For a moment he was tempted, she could tell. For a moment he met her gaze full on and the killing lust came into his eyes. His hand reached to rest on the pommel of his weapon. She smiled, hoping to goad him into making the call, but at the last he seemed to think the better of it and lowered his head.
‘Good,’ she said with finality. ‘Tryell, take your warriors and find me the girl with hair like mine. Take trackers, search the area, find her and bring her to me. I will offer her to Kazakital myself. The rest of you assemble your forces. We will march on to the next human town and find merit by slaughtering more men.’
They nodded agreement and approval and rose to depart. Justine was left alone in the chill hall with her thoughts, wondering just what she would do when they brought the girl to her.
‘Wake up, manling! Something’s coming!’
Felix roused himself from sleep. Wisps of eerie dreams still shrouded his mind. He shook his head to clear it, and felt the ache in his neck and back from lying on the cold forest floor. Chill had eaten through the insulation of the leaves and leeched strength from his body. He rose slowly to his feet and rubbed the sleep from his sticky eyes. As quietly as he could, he unsheathed his sword and glanced around.
Gotrek stood nearby; a squat, massive statue frozen in the dim light of the fading fire. The red glow of the embers reflected from his axe blade. The dwarf carried a weapon of blood.
Felix looked at the sky. The moons were almost down. Good. Dawn was not far off.
‘What is it?’ he asked. His words caught in his throat and came out as a rasping whisper. He did not need the dwarf’s posture of alertness to tell him something
was wrong. There was an air of quiet menace about the wood that even he could feel.
‘Listen!’
Felix listened. He strained his ears to pick up any unusual sounds. At first all he heard was the thumping of his heart.
He could hear nothing unusual, only the chirping of the night insects and the quiet rustle of leaves. Then, somewhere far off, so quiet he might only have imagined it, he heard the low muttering of voices. He looked over at the Slayer. Gotrek nodded.
Felix glanced around to see what had become of Kat. She was awake as well, sitting hunched up by the fire. Her eyes looked huge and scared in the firelight. Felix prayed for the sun to rise quickly. He turned from the fire and peered out into the shadows, resolving not to look back and spoil his night sight again.
‘Kat, put more wood on the fire,’ he said quietly. There was an almost overwhelming temptation to turn and see if she was obeying. He fought it and was relieved when he heard movement behind him and the crackling of wood catching light. Shadows raced away from the fire and the island of light in which they stood expanded to encompass the near forest. The trees looked like monochrome titans in the dim illumination.
Felix stood absolutely still. In spite of the chill, sweat ran down his spine and made his clothing clammy. His palms were slippery and it felt like strength was draining from his limbs. He felt an urge to flee from whatever approached.
It was definitely coming closer, making no attempt at stealth. He could hear heavy footsteps in the distance and once a short yelping bark of what sounded like pain. There was a tautening of the muscles in his stomach and a fluttering, excited feeling in his belly. The incautious approach of their foes spoke of overwhelming self-confidence. Was he about to meet the destroyers of Kleindorf?
Strangely he began to feel the urge to move in the direction of the noise, to investigate, to not simply stand here by the fire like a sheep waiting to be slaughtered. To calm himself he made a few experimental swipes with his sword. It hissed as it cut the air. The runes on its blade grew brighter as if in anticipation of the coming conflict. The loosening of his muscles and the readiness of his enchanted dragon-hilted blade relaxed Felix a little. A smile grafted itself to his lips. If he died here he would not die alone.
