by Warhammer
Warpfang sat back. He pounded a fist against his throne. ‘I want the man-things driven back. I want the storm-things driven back. I want the duardin-things driven back and then slaughtered. I want-need this now-now.’ He pointed at the huddle of lieutenants. ‘You will do this thing, yes-yes. And soon.’
They scrambled out of the burrow, fighting and shoving to be the first. Warpfang sighed. They would not do the thing. It was beyond them. But they would keep the enemy occupied and penned in, until his allies got under way.
He glanced up as the rats in the hanging cages began to squeal as one. The animals stiffened, their throats bulging, jaws wide. Thin arcs of emerald energy billowed from the mechanisms beneath each cage and sparked between them, until all were limned in a shimmering glow. The squealing rose in volume and stretched into a new sound – a voice.
‘–hear me?’
‘I can hear you, Quell,’ said Warpfang. ‘Your farsquealer works better than I expected, renegade. Perhaps you are as much the engineer as you claim to be.’
‘Many thanks, oh most brutal of despots. This humble skaven is pleased that you are pleased, and grovels at your feet.’ Quell snickered. ‘Or not.’
Warpfang restrained a growl of anger. The renegade warlock engineer could be infuriating, when he put his mind to it. It was no wonder the arch-warlocks of Skryre had put a price on his mangy head. But so long as he produced results, Warpfang would refrain from collecting it. ‘Is your war engine ready, renegade?’
‘Yes-yes, most esteemed Clawlord. A few more tests – hardly any – and then we will crush the man-things, yes-yes. And you will be adjudged as a most puissant warlord, most astute, most brave-fierce, yes.’
Warpfang snorted. The renegade had promised him a weapon capable of smashing down the immense Bastion that protected the City of Storms. But as yet, he’d seen no evidence of any such thing. ‘I care only about the walls, Quell. Smash-shatter them for me, or I will make sure your masters know where to find you.’
Quell chittered in amusement. One of the rats burst into flames and slumped, consumed by the energy flowing through it. Another followed, and then another, until all of the strange cages were full of dying, burning rats. Quell’s chittering broke apart and faded away, lost in the crackle of flames.
Warpfang grunted in annoyance. Much as it irked him, he would have to trust that Quell knew his business. Excelsis would fall, and its treasures would be his.
He signalled one of the deathvermin.
‘Get more rats for the cages.’
Three
The Great Maker
Volker turned Makkelsson’s flask over in his hands. It was still intact, though blackened by the heat of the explosion that had claimed its owner’s life. Carefully, he unscrewed it and held it up. ‘May your soul ever descend, and find comfort in the deepest glimmering, my friend,’ he said, saluting Makkelsson before taking a swig.
He sat on the edge of the unconsecrated section of the Bronze Claws Bastion, looking out over the battlefield. Wildfires swept the plains, putting a halt to all hostilities for the moment. Both sides were regrouping. The skaven seemed to have no intention of leaving. Fresh freeguild troops filed through the trenches below as their battered comrades trudged back into the city. The Sons of Mallus, inured to war, remained at their posts. Greel and his Iron-sides would hold that savaged patch of ground until there was nothing left to defend, and even then they would not retreat unless ordered to do so.
Volker took some small comfort in that. Not much, but some. Flesh tore and bone broke, but sigmarite held firm. He raised the flask again. ‘To Sigmar’s storm. May the rain fall on the just and unjust alike.’ Another swig. The liquid burned going down.
Nearby, a raven croaked, as if in agreement. Dozens of the black birds perched on the edge of the Bastion, watching the trenches below with the keen interest of carrion eaters. As one, the birds swept into the air and away, towards the sea.
He glanced over his shoulder, watching them vanish into the dark. This part of the Bastion lay in the shadow of the Spear of Mallus. The mountain of rock rose high into the air, a jagged reminder of the world-that-was. A tombstone for a dead world, consumed by Chaos and spat out. Or so the stories went. Volker didn’t know how much of it he believed. There were so many stories, and seemingly so little truth to any of them.
What he did know was that without the Spear, Excelsis wouldn’t exist. The Spear bled secrets and prophecies into the aether. If you stood on the docks at midnight, it was said you could hear the wind whispering answers to questions no one had asked. He wasn’t sure how it worked – no one really was. Not even the mages and would-be prophesiers who’d flocked to the spear, looking to profit from its incessant auguries.
He glanced up, at the floating towers and observatories of the Collegiate Arcane, which circled the Spear in a slow, unending gavotte. They had been there almost since the beginning, cast into the air not long after the Stormcast Eternals of the Knights Excelsior had raised the wedge of black iron and dark stone they called the Consecralium. The Stormkeep crouched amid the western districts like a hungry ghyrlion, its ramparts studded with trebuchets and ballista.
Not all of those celestial engines were aimed outside the city walls. Volker had heard the stories – whispers of brutal pogroms and mass executions. Of thousands put to the sword or drowned in the rising tides of the harbour, on suspicion of heretical worship. Of the great crypts beneath the Consecralium, where the bones of suspected dissidents were held and, on occasion, questioned by a gathering of Lord-Relictors and the amethyst mages of the Collegiate Arcane. Even death was no escape from the justice of Azyr.
Volker shivered and took another slug from the flask. Sometimes he wondered what he’d hoped to find by coming here, to the edge of civilisation. Not that there had been anything for him in Azyrheim. A life spent in the smoky halls of the Ironweld, fiddling with broken mechanisms. Perhaps a high rank would have come his way eventually. More likely he would have remained a minor engineer, with nothing to show for his efforts but a bad back, weak eyes and a beard in need of a good combing.
He rubbed the stubble on his chin, suddenly aware that he needed a shave. More than that, he needed food. His stomach gurgled encouragingly. He could smell cooking fires and roasting meat, wafting up from the Veins. The outer city was waking up, as the sun set.
‘I thought I’d find you up here.’
Volker turned. ‘Master Jorik,’ he said, politely.
Jorik Grunndrak was the most senior member of the Ironweld Arsenal in Excelsis – the Master of the Arsenal. It had been Grunndrak who’d assigned him to the trenches. Not out of any malice, Volker knew, but to keep him out of the way of Herzborg and his cronies.
The cogsmith was old. Older even than the Warden Kings who held council in the deep citadels below Excelsis. Rumour had it that he’d seen Sigmar close the last Gates of Azyr, and helped craft the runes that kept the Three Brethren inviolate for five centuries.
Jorik stumped along the edge of the Bastion, unlit pipe clenched between his teeth. He wore heavy, rune-marked armour over thick robes, and had his thumbs tucked into his belt. He carried no visible weapons, but that didn’t mean he was unarmed. ‘Feeling sorry for yourself?’ he growled.
‘I’m toasting the memory of a friend.’ Volker sloshed the flask.
Jorik nodded sombrely. ‘Makkelsson. I heard. A good engineer. His name will be inscribed beside those of his predecessors, once the cannon is repaired.’
Every artillery piece in the Ironweld was marked with the names of those who had died overseeing its function. Volker knew of at least one volley gun that had so many names inscribed on each of its barrels, there was no room for any other decoration.
‘Herzborg wants your head,’ Jorik continued. ‘He’s decided you’re to blame for it all.’ Claudio Herzborg was currently the highest-ranking gunmaster in Excelsis, and a sc
ion of the ancient Houses of Thunder. His blood was of the purest Azyrite stock, as he took pains to remind others at every available opportunity. He surrounded himself with a circle of similar minds and they spent most of their time attending the galas and balls that seemed to occur daily in the stormstone halls of the city’s Noble Quarter.
Volker nodded. He’d expected that. ‘Going to give it to him?’
Jorik laughed. ‘No.’ The old cogsmith sat down beside Volker with a grunt. ‘It wasn’t your fault, you know. I’m told you performed your function with all due efficacy.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Lord-Celestant Greel was very complimentary.’
‘It wasn’t enough.’
‘You’re young yet, to carry those tools,’ the cogsmith said. He gestured, and Volker handed him the flask. The duardin drank. ‘They weigh heavy on you.’
‘I oversaw the rifling of those handguns myself,’ Volker said, absently. He gestured to the trenches below. ‘A good job, that. Imparts just enough spin to keep the ball on track.’ He tapped his head. ‘I did the calculations up here.’
‘And that reason, among others, is why you hold the rank of gunmaster.’
‘Herzborg wouldn’t agree.’
‘Herzborg is a fool,’ Jorik said. ‘He’s here because of his blood, not his brains. He’s aggravated every real officer in the city, according to General Synor.’
Volker frowned. ‘The same might be said of me.’ He’d heard the whispers throughout his career – mostly from men like Herzborg – that his mother had used her position on the Grand Conclave of Azyrheim to place him in the Ironweld, so that she might influence it through her son. But then, such rumours flew thick and fast in Azyrheim.
‘Possibly. But the Arsenal knows its own. That you’re here is proof enough.’ Jorik handed the flask back.
‘Herzborg doesn’t think so. Nor do many of the others.’
‘And so? I do not see Herzborg here. I did not see him in the trenches. That is what counts here, lad, not words.’ Jorik scraped at the bowl of his pipe with a flat knife. He tapped the blade against the bottom of the bowl, emptying it. ‘Besides, it’s good to have influential kin. No duardin worth his beard would look down on a man for that. It’s only sensible, after all. Kin are the only ones you can trust.’ He put his pipe between his teeth. ‘A saying my cousin Oken is fond of.’
Volker looked at him, startled. ‘Oken…?’
Jorik nodded. ‘An old clan, ours. Venerable even when the world was young. We dug our way out of one world and into another, ahead of an all-consuming fire, or so the story goes. We left a lake enclosed by mountains, and came to new waters and new mountains. Formed a new clan from the ruins of the old.’
‘Oken never talked about it much.’
‘That sounds like him.’ Jorik concentrated on packing his pipe. ‘Haven’t seen him in some time. Not like him, to go so long without sharing a drink.’
Volker shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t.’ He sighed. ‘I wish he was here.’
‘I suspect he does as well.’ He lit his pipe carefully, scraping the edge of the blade across the rim of the stone bowl. He puffed contentedly. ‘You know where he is?’
‘No.’ Volker peered at the cogsmith. An odd line of questioning. What was Jorik getting at? ‘Do you?’
‘No,’ Jorik said. He puffed more fiercely, and sparks danced above the bowl of the pipe. ‘But I know someone who might.’ He turned, smoke curling about his face. ‘And they want to speak to you, lad.’
Volker felt a chill at the cogsmith’s words. The chill only grew as he noticed the shape the smoke was taking.
A face. The same face he’d seen in the fires of the destroyed cannon. A face he’d half convinced himself was nothing more than a hallucination, brought on by the stress of near death. A face that was as familiar to any member of the Ironweld as their own.
Volker shot to his feet, heart hammering. ‘The Great Maker,’ he whispered. The Smith-God had not been seen in the mortal realms for nearly a century. Some said he had followed Grimnir into whatever darkness awaited fallen gods. Others, that he had simply grown tired of serving as Sigmar’s armourer, and had struck out on his own. A few claimed that the runelords of the Dispossessed knew, but if they did, they weren’t telling.
Eyes like sparks met his own and the mouth moved. There was no sound, but he heard what the apparition said nonetheless. A time. A place. The location stretched across his mind like smoke. It was somewhere in the outer city – what folk called the Veins. He knew, without knowing how, that once he started walking he would find where he was supposed to go. He hesitated. ‘Is it – is it really him?’
Jorik puffed contentedly on his pipe. ‘I wouldn’t know about that. I merely pass along the message.’ He cocked an eye at Volker. ‘I’d suggest doing as he says, though.’
Elsewhere.
In his dark cave, Volundr, Forgemaster of Aqshy, crushed embers between his fingers and read futures in the trickling soot. Not the future, or even a future, but many different ones. Paths and destinies untaken and unfulfilled. In the fires of his forge could be read the life of all the realms, for good or ill.
He turned, gesturing. ‘Bring him.’
His assistants lurched forwards, dragging the slave between them. They were large brutes, descendants of the Raxulian herds that had once haunted the crater rim of Klaxus. Shaggy and crimson, the beastmen wore muzzles of brass and leather wired to their skulls, and their horns had been shaved and capped with gold. Their smocks were stiff with years of bloodstains, and scars left by fire and lash cut deep trails through their flesh.
The slave was new – a recent capture, from some minor battlefield. A hundred warlords owed Volundr a tithe of flesh and bone for every victory earned with the weapons he crafted. Most of the slaves were put to work in the quarry pits and bone fields, but some were fit for a more important purpose.
The man struggled, even now. Limbs broken, flesh scarred, he struggled. His breath came in tortured gasps, through ragged lips. The stink of the battlefield was still on him, the blood of friends and enemies alike still fresh on the tatters of his clothing and armour. He gargled curses in a liquid tongue – some hill dialect from Chamon, Volundr thought. ‘The anvil,’ he said, stepping back.
His assistants did as he bade, forcing the captive’s head and shoulders down on the scalding surface of the anvil. The man screamed and thrashed. Volundr lifted the chains he held, and the second, smaller anvil that dangled from them. ‘You were brave,’ he intoned. ‘And thus does Khorne reward brave men.’
His assistants leapt back with bestial speed as he swung the anvil up, and brought it crashing down on the slave’s head. Bone splintered and flesh tore as the wounded man’s skull ruptured at the point of impact and was reduced to shivering fragments. The blood seeped into the surface of the anvil, causing the pitted metal to grow white-hot. Volundr carefully gathered the bone fragments up, and dropped them into the fire pit.
One of his assistants whined eagerly. Volundr grunted and gestured. ‘As you will.’
The beastmen fell upon the body ravenously, tearing at it. They stuffed gobbets of cooling meat through the grilles of their muzzles, and painted their fur and manes in blood. Volundr watched the creatures for a moment. He almost envied them such simple pleasures. But such was not for him. Not any more.
He touched the scarred surface of his chest-plate. He could still recall the feeling of the lightning coursing through him. The hammer blow of Sigmar’s wrath, called down on his head by a dead man, shrouded in iron. One of Sigmar’s chosen.
The sky-god had returned with a vengeance. And war had come with him. Not the little wars of the Age of Blood, but a conflagration unlike any other. A fire so great that it had spread to every corner of every realm, and drawn every eye to its glow. For the first time in a long time, Khorne knew the peace of total war.
His champions had grown
fat and lazy, barring a few. Now, those who remained were lean and eager to prove themselves. They cast themselves into the fire, heedless of the risks. That was all Khorne asked of most of his followers: that they show courage, and leave a river of blood in their wake.
‘But he asks more of those of us with the wit to hear,’ he murmured. All of the blood had seeped into the anvil now. In the resulting steam, he saw Ahazian Kel riding hard across the dusty plains of Shyish. Dark shapes pursued him – the servants of a dead queen. Volundr growled, low in his throat.
Unacceptable. But there was nothing to be done, save hope that he had chosen well. Ahazian knew where to go, and would have to reach it on his own. The iron-oath prevented him from doing anything more to aid his champion.
Not that Ahazian Kel needed aid. The Ekran had only been defeated, in the end, by their own ferocity. They had resisted every army sent against them, until Khorne, at last, set his hooks in the kel – the warrior princes who’d ruled the Ekran. Slowly, surely, working with a subtlety only rarely displayed, Khorne had twisted their martial honour into something savage. Their empire had collapsed in an orgy of violence, leaving behind only ruin.
Ahazian was not the only kel to survive, whatever he claimed. But all were like him – unfit for command, desirous only of battle. They would never rise to lead great armies in Khorne’s name, but their services were highly sought after by those who did. As warriors they had few equals. But would skill alone prove enough for the task ahead?
That the Eight Lamentations were stirring now was a portent worth heeding. The weapons scented war the way a hound scented prey. Though the battle for the All-Gate was at a standstill, the realms still thundered with the cries of the slain. The Three-Eyed King stirred in his keep, making ready, and the Chaos gods watched him, and plotted.
As his fellow forgemasters plotted. They had all gone their own ways, seeking the advantage. The iron-oath was coming to its end and soon they would be at each other’s throats once more. Whichever one of them succeeded in this quest would face an alliance of the others. They could not allow one of them to stand above the rest. Better death than subservience. Thus did the Blood God control the hearts and minds of his servants. Even those whom he clearly favoured.
