Warcry: The Anthology

by Various Authors

  Ma’asi looked quickly around the debris spoil. The Striking Death lay together in pieces over the scrap heap, already little more than ruddy stains beneath the sand that was cloaking them. The arachnarok could have killed Ma’asi just as easily if it had wanted to. The only reason it had not done so already was that it had dismissed him so early, and so easily.

  One might almost call it the Gods’ will.

  Jarissa would have.

  ‘I hope it eats you slowly, little warrior.’

  Ma’asi looked down.

  Thruka Heart-eater lay in a lake of his own blood, half-smothered in sand, one leg crushed beyond any hope of healing. Ma’asi studied him for a moment, awareness slowly dawning that his eyes no longer blinked and were untroubled by the wind-blown sand.

  ‘You knew this was not the eight-tailed naga.’

  ‘You butchered my warband. Now I butcher yours.’ The champion laughed wetly. ‘Now who is unworthy?’

  Ma’asi nodded slowly.

  ‘The Coiling Ones punish Papa Yaga for denying Nagendra the taste of your soul.’ Calmly, Ma’asi scratched the barbed tip of his arach­narok gauntlet across Thruka’s chest. As soon as human blood tasted spider poison, the shallow cut began to boil. Even with limbs crushed, Thruka found the mobility and strength to arch up from the ground.

  His jaw clenched in agony.

  ‘I go to my final… hunt… with a smile on my face and the… blessings of my God.’

  Ma’asi put his bare foot on the warrior’s chest and pinned him down while he died. Once he had, he nodded slowly.

  As he had suspected, Thruka Heart-eater was less than worthy.

  Looking up from the stilling warrior, Ma’asi surveyed the township.

  With the tribes’ forces divided, the grots had been holding their own. Most of the Striking Death were dead. He could just make out Yaga Kushmer, a whirl surrounded by ten or more grots, his contortionist frame riddled with the feathered shafts of Gloomspite arrows. But the arachnarok was coming, and the screams rising from the township informed Ma’asi that the grots were rapidly becoming aware of this fact.

  ‘Watch for the coming of the eight-tailed naga,’ Ma’asi murmured. ‘Seek the trueblood child of Nagendra. Rejoice. And beware. Chosen of the Varanguard.’

  A smile tugged on his cold, green-tinted lips.

  It was possible he had done Thruka a disservice. Perhaps Ma’asi had never been seeking a descendent of Nagendra at all. He looked down at his poison-dripping arachnarok gauntlet.

  He was the trueblood child of Nagendra.

  Chosen of the Varanguard, the vision had said.

  ‘Flee,’ he yelled, to any Striking Death still alive or in a position to hear his words, confident that it would include neither Papa Yaga nor Muad’isha. ‘Nagendra has been appeased, and the Coiling Path is far from its end!’

  THE IRON PROMISE

  Josh Reynolds

  Vos Stalis sighed as the shadow of black wings fell over him. Instinctively, the Iron Golem twitched his head to the side. A crude blade skidded off his cage-helm. As the fury swooped past, shrieking in frustration, Vos spun and caught the gangling creature’s ankle. The dominar dragged the struggling daemon to the ground and stamped on its back, shattering its spine. It wasn’t worth further effort.

  The daemon’s leathery wings continued to flap for a moment, as it thrashed in helpless agony, but he was already turning away. There were more of the gargoyle-like vermin to kill. There were always more. The Skullpike Mountains were infested with them. And worse besides. ‘Be quick,’ he called out to the others. ‘Finish them. Before their screams draw something else down on us.’

  His warband was only half a dozen strong – but they were worth twice that. He watched as his drillmaster, Varka, crushed a fury with a blow from her flail. Nearby, his signifier, Kolsk, bellowed orders at the trio of legionaries that fought in the shadow of his standard, their rounded shields raised against the darting attacks of their daemonic opponents. One of the legionaries tore a pair of weighted bolas from her belt and sent them whirling about a fury, grounding the daemon so that her companions could kill it.

  Like Vos, the others were clad in the heavy war-plate of the Iron Legion, and carried weapons forged in the smithies of the Onyx Fist, the greatest dreadhold of the Iron Golems’ empire. They were the elite, and bore the tools of war with ease. No other warriors could so easily defy the dangers of the Bloodwind Spoil.

  ‘Fight, you puling bastards,’ Kolsk snarled, smashing a fury from the air with a sweep of his battle-standard. The heavy standard was topped by a shield of iron, strung with garlands of brass links. It clattered like a smithy with every twitch of Kolsk’s muscular arm. ‘Beat them and break them – they are weak, and you are strong!’

  The bat-winged daemons swarmed about the Iron Golems, screeching obscenities in half-human voices. Vos did not listen. What would be the point? What could such weak things have to say to a man that was worth hearing?

  He caught his warhammer in two hands and swung it in a wide arc. Dark flesh pulped and tore as he caught two of the beasts and sent them sprawling to the ground. As they tried to rise, he finished them with a quick succession of blows. Their forms sputtered and dissolved like fat on a cooking pan, sending up pungent wisps.

  The furies had had enough. The remains of the flock rose skywards, screaming and wailing. They flew south, out over the wilds of the Spoil, leaving behind the dead and dying. Several of the beasts, too crippled to fly, tried to crawl away into the surrounding stones. Vos’ legionaries finished them off with swift efficiency, silencing their whimpers.

  ‘Crola, Garn – keep watch, in case they regain their courage,’ Vos said, gesturing to two of the legionaries. Garn nodded. Crola freed her bolas from the body of the fury she’d brought down and genuflected.

  ‘Aye, dominar.’

  Vos looked at the third legionary. ‘Harsk, check the path ahead.’

  ‘As you command, dominar,’ Harsk grunted. He hurried away, armour clattering. Vos watched him go, and then turned to his subordinates.

  ‘Good fight, eh, Kolsk?’ Varka said, scraping ichor from her flail. ‘Just the thing to get the blood moving.’

  ‘You call that a fight?’ Kolsk snorted. ‘It was barely a scuffle. Furies are no better than beasts.’ He laughed. ‘In fact, I’d wager there are things aplenty in these mountains that would give us a tougher time. Don’t you think so, dominar?’

  Vos shook his head. ‘A killing blow knows no master,’ he said. ‘A fury can kill you as dead as an ogor, if the circumstances are right.’

  ‘Be very embarrassing though,’ Varka said. Kolsk nodded.

  Vos chuckled. ‘That I agree with.’ He climbed up onto a nearby outcrop of volcanic rock and looked into the setting sun. Past the red glare, and the hazy fumes rising from the porous slopes of the mountains, he could just make out their destination – the smithy-citadel of the duardin forgemaster Khoragh Ar-Nardras Has’ut.

  ‘Is that it, then?’ Varka asked, peering towards the sun.

  ‘Yes.’ A few more hours of hard travel, Vos estimated, and they’d be at the great stone bridge which led to the outer gates of the citadel. He could just make out the tops of the pillars that lined it, as well as the harsh glow of the magmatic river surging below.

  ‘It doesn’t look like much, from here,’ Varka said.

  ‘You betray your ignorance with every word, woman,’ Kolsk said. ‘A thousand fires feed a thousand forges beneath those peaks. The vaults of that place stretch down into the very roots of the mountains, each of them full of enough arms and armour to gird a legion. And all of it ours by right.’

  ‘And that is why we are here,’ Vos said. ‘To claim what we are owed.’ He stepped down off the rock. ‘Come. Let us go. We will reach the bridge by dawn’s first light.’

  Despite this optimism, the path throug
h the mountains was arduous, even for Iron Golems. Poisonous fumes rose from cracks in the stones at their feet, and the mountains trembled as distant peaks erupted in cascades of molten rock. These tremors brought with them avalanches that swept down in rolling cascades of tumbling scree, forcing Vos and the others to divert from the path or seek shelter – something that became more difficult as the sun set, and light faded.

  As night fell, one of the boiling gales of gore that gave the Bloodwind Spoil its name swept over the mountains. Steaming abattoir droplets pelted the warband from on high, staining their armour and flesh a grisly shade of red.

  Vos heard one of the others – Harsk, he thought – choke on the effluvia, but to his satisfaction the legionary stumbled on without falling. Only the strong were fit to serve the Iron Legion. Only the strong could journey into the Bloodwind Spoil and survive.

  The Spoil lay between worlds. A wild, untamed place, clinging barnacle-like to the confluence known as the Eightpoints. At times, as they climbed up the steaming slopes, Vos caught a glimpse of the lowlands below. He saw the great fortified road that stretched like a black ribbon across the wastes, and the gleaming Arcway that led home to Chamon, and the Ferrium Mountains. Too, he saw the dust clouds cast up by armies marching to war, and the smoke of a thousand conflagrations.

  This place was always at war. Peace was unnatural. If there was peace, you could be certain only that the Gods weren’t paying attention.

  But that did not mean that alliances were not possible. The Iron Golems sat at the centre of a web of trading agreements and military alliances, spun steadily over the years by High Overlord Mithraxes. Not all of their partners were human – counted among their number were skaven warlords and ogor tyrants. And duardin.

  Duardin such as Khoragh Ar-Nardras Has’ut. One of a twisted handful who chose to make their homes far from the hearths of their kin, in the Bloodwind Spoil and elsewhere. They were renowned for their artifice, as well as their cruelty and sadism. And Khoragh was among the cruellest of their number.

  Long ago, he had made common cause with High Overlord Mithraxes and the Iron Golems. In return for slaves and protection, Khoragh had promised to deliver a tithe of raw iron to Mithraxes. An annual contribution of ore was owed to the Onyx Fist, to be forged into arms and armour for the elite of the Legion.

  But Khoragh had broken his promise to the High Overlord. He had delivered the tithe without fail for a century – until this year. It was Vos’ duty to find out why he had not done so, and convince him to make recompense. Failing that, he was to take what was owed, with interest.

  Vos was determined to see this done. Not merely out of a sense of duty, but because it would raise him high in the esteem of his blood-cousin, Mithraxes. He was not immune to ambition – no warrior worth the name was – and success would bring reward.

  Failure, on the other hand, was best not contemplated.

  The night wore on, as they made their way through the crags. Up high slopes, and down along winding paths, littered with the detritus of a forgotten age. The mountains had swallowed many kingdoms since the coming of Chaos, and they passed through the ruins of more than one forgotten watchtower and outpost.

  Things howled in the dark. Furies gibbered somewhere high up. The path grew tortuous, falling entirely away in places. They were forced to stop and light torches, made from bones found among the rocks and rags torn from their clothing, soaked in oil. The light they cast was sickly and colourless, but it served well enough.

  They had not gone far when Kolsk stopped. ‘Dominar,’ he murmured. Vos paused. The light of the torches had caught on something – a gleam, as of glass or a gemstone. And a sound, like the murmur of night insects. Vos raised his hand.

  ‘Hold,’ he rumbled.

  The air was thick with a reddish haze that stank of sulphur. The sound, faint at first, grew louder. Closer. Vos recognised it then, and felt a flicker of unease. ‘What is that?’ Varka asked. ‘It sounds like… glass breaking.’

  Vos gestured sharply. ‘Quiet. Look.’

  Drifting towards them through the murky air were several floating polyps of crystal. Their facets shimmered in the torchlight, and phantasmal faces, some contorted in agony, others snarling in anger, coalesced within them. The faces faded as soon as one looked at them too closely.

  ‘Back,’ Vos growled. ‘All of you – back.’ Varka and the others obeyed instantly. They all knew how dangerous such oddities were. The strange wonders of the Bloodwind Spoil could devour a person as surely as its innumerable horrors.

  A hot wind stirred the dust of the trail, momentarily obscuring the polyps. But Vos could still hear them – the faint clink of grit sliding along crystalline edges. He readied his hammer. ‘Shields up. Do not lower them, whatever you do.’

  ‘Dominar…’ Kolsk said, warily.

  ‘Quiet,’ Vos snarled. ‘Hold your position.’

  The first crystal glided forward through the curtain of dust. Vos tensed and sprang, hammer raised. The crystal shattered with a scream like that of a frightened infant. Swiftly, he swung his hammer, scattering the fragments lest they touch him. Even broken, the crystals were dangerous. The merest shard could drain a man of blood and soul.

  The shattered crystal’s cry reverberated through the others, and they drifted back, as if frightened. He took a step towards them. ‘Strike your shields,’ he said. The three legionaries slammed their weapons against the faces of their shields. The sound was like thunder, and the crystals twisted in mid-air as if confused. ‘Varka, Kolsk, help me.’

  Varka and Kolsk moved up to flank him. The crystals retreated before them, as Vos had hoped. ‘Strike the rocks,’ he said. Kolsk struck the ground with his standard, as Varka slammed her flail down. Stones dislodged by the vibrations tumbled from the slopes above. One of the crystals spun, its facets cracked. Vos lunged and shattered it, careful to avoid the shards. Like the other, it screamed as it came apart.

  The last two drifted out of sight, hidden by the dust. Vos brought the others up short. ‘They are fleeing. Let them go.’

  ‘What were they?’ Varka asked, prodding at one of the shards with her flail. Something that might have been an eye opened within the depths of the shard, before dissipating. Vos crushed the shard, and swept the pieces from the path.

  ‘I do not know what they are called. They haunt the high places, draining the life from those they catch unawares. Every soul they take adds a new facet to them.’ He grunted. ‘We are lucky. The ones I saw were twice that size.’ He looked at them. ‘Come. The night runs on, and soon it will be sunrise.’

  They pressed on, faster now, all of them sensing that their journey was almost at an end. When they finally reached the bridge, the sun’s rays were scraping across the lowest peaks. Flocks of black birds circled above, croaking in disturbingly human voices. Scatterings of bones were piled in untidy heaps among the rocks all around, and strange insects crept among them, clicking and trilling.

  The bridge stretched across a river of bubbling lava. Islands of black glass floated in the slow-moving current, and peaks of cooled lava rose along the sides, stretching upwards to the underside of the bridge. The bridge itself was a straight expanse of shaped stone, lined to either side by heavy, rounded pillars – some broken, others missing in their entirety.

  A canopy of chains had been strung from the pillars, and from them dangled the remains of dozens of bodies – not human, but duardin. They gleamed strangely in the light of the rising sun, and Vos thought that they had been hanging for some time… Long enough for the heat to all but mummify them.

  More birds perched among the bodies, denuding them of weather-shrunken flesh and muscle. Some had been entirely picked clean, and their bare bones clattered in the hot air rising from the lava flow.

  ‘Fyreslayers,’ Kolsk murmured. ‘This place belonged to them, once, or so I heard.’

  Vos nodded. ‘Yes. Khorag
h took this place from them, long ago. He used strange engines to breach their defences and then, when the slaughter was done, forced the survivors to rebuild them to his own satisfaction.’

  On the other side of the bridge the gates to the great smithy-citadel rose along a rough escarpment. Wrought from iron and brass, they had been shaped to resemble the monstrous features of what Vos thought was a bull. The bull’s swooping horns were bastions, stretching to either side of the gates. Gun-slits lined them, from tip to base. But there was no sign that the bastions were manned. In fact, there was no sign of guards at all.

  Beyond the gates, the towers and battlements of the citadel cut the skyline above like jagged teeth. They rose and fell with the crags, and were crowned in smoke. Vos inhaled, tasting the heat of the great mountain-forge on the wind. Anyone other than a legionary of the Iron Golems would have found it oppressive. The stones around them bled raw heat from the veins of fire running through the volcanic mountains.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Varka said. She looked at him. ‘It reminds me of home.’

  Vos nodded. ‘Yes. But home is better guarded than this. Where are the sentries? Why is our approach not challenged?’ He shook his head. ‘Sloppy.’

  ‘Not a word one usually associates with duardin,’ Kolsk said. ‘Even one of this sort.’ The signifier struck the ground with the ferrule of his standard – a sign of his unease, Vos knew. Kolsk, like all good soldiers, would rather die than admit fear. Vos nodded.

  ‘Something is wrong.’