by Warhammer
Volker watched her as she walked away.
‘Not too late to shoot her,’ Zana said.
‘I heard that,’ Adhema called out, without turning.
‘You were meant to,’ Zana shouted.
Volker shook his head and looked towards the horizon, and beyond it, somewhere, the forest of Gorch. If Oken were there, he would find him.
One way or another.
The warrior slept.
And in his dreams, Gung spoke.
The spear… hungered. No, better to say that it… desired. It desired to be used. It longed for a whispered name, and the rush of air as it was cast towards its prey. It thirsted for blood, and the screams of its victim. All of these things, Gung desired.
It could not articulate these desires, for it was a weapon, and the soul of a weapon is no more complex than that of an insect. A thing of simple wants and brute incomprehension. It was enough that it desired, and in its desire, sang. Like its soul, its song was simple. A quavering paean to murder.
The oldest song, that. A song sung at the beginning of time, and at the end. A beautiful song, to the one whose head now echoed with its notes. It wrapped itself around him, like the coils of some enormous serpent. Enfolding him. Piercing him. Filling him. And beneath the song, crawling in its wake, came a voice. A harsh voice.
A weapon’s voice.
…close…
…so close…
Ahazian Kel sat up, heart thudding. He clutched the fragment of the spear with one hand. A dull ache radiated through his fingers and palm. He opened stiff fingers and hissed in surprise. The black fragment nestled in the bloody meat of his palm like a maggot. As he watched, it squirmed, seeking to drive itself deeper into his hand.
Carefully, he pried it loose. ‘Hungry little beast, aren’t you?’ he grunted. He squeezed the blood from his palm onto the fragment, rubbing it into the facets. It wasn’t the first dream he’d had since claiming the fragment, but it had been the most vivid. He looked around. The campfire he’d built was burning low. His horse stood nearby, feeding on the body of one of the men he’d killed a few hours ago.
The Vurm-tai had followed his trail, harrying him. With vengeance on their mind, they had made for disappointingly easy prey. A dozen of their youngest and bravest had pitted their strength against his, chanting for his death.
They chanted no longer. Their cooling bodies lay scattered about in the thick grasses, and their steeds had scarpered, save the few he’d killed. He felt some regret at the rapidity of the confrontation. He had killed them too quickly, without savouring the deed. Once he might have toyed with them for hours, or days. But not now. Not with the song of the Spear of Shadows ringing in his head.
The spear was calling to him. Drawing him onwards, across the steppes. It wanted – needed – to be wielded and Ahazian was the one who would do so. The old wounds in his palms itched, not for the barbs of his weapons, but for something different. Something unique. His axe, buried in the skull of his last kill, hissed angrily. Its haft pulsed crimson, swollen with the blood of the slain savage. The barbs set into the haft flexed, their hooked tips gleaming thirstily. Like its master, the goreaxe was rarely satisfied.
‘Settle down,’ he murmured. ‘I am not your first wielder, and you are not my first axe. One of us will outlive the other. This is how it is.’
His skullhammer grumbled agreement from where it lay near the fire. It was an old weapon and had belonged to many warriors in its time. And like all old things, it had its share of unshakeable certainties. He stroked its head, calming the ancient hammer. The axe resisted any attempts to placate it, however. It could hear Gung’s murder-song, resonating through the dark places of his soul. And it didn’t like it.
The axe too was old, in its way. Though it had been reshaped and forged anew by Volundr, it was still the same weapon it had been. Still the same black axe wielded by Anhur, the Scarlet Lord, in his conquest of Klaxus almost a century earlier. Ahazian had not been among the warriors of the Eight Tribes who had marched on the crater-kingdoms at Anhur’s command, but he had met some who had, later. After Anhur had fallen, swept away by Sigmar’s storm.
Those had been heady days, full of fear and glory. The armies of Khorne had grown fat and lazy on easy meat, and the servants of the Changer and the King of Poxes had retreated to their own demesnes, afraid to challenge the might of those who walked the Red Path. Ahazian had contented himself with seeking out and challenging the great champions of the Furnace Lands – warriors like Gadon the Ox, or the Lord-Razulhi of Salamandron. He had fought his way into the bloodstained pavilions of Havocwild, the Headsman of Thurn, and through the magmatic monastery of the Fireweed Sect.
He had collected the skulls of a hundred gore-handed heroes before he had heard the first whisper of the celestial storm or seen one of Sigmar’s armoured slaves. And then, heroes had come seeking him. Warlords sought him out, with promises of wealth and glory, seeking to sway him to their banner. Having the services of a Kel of the Ekran was a symbol of high status among the fractious Bloodbound.
‘And should it be otherwise?’ he murmured. ‘Are we not the deadliest killers in all creation?’ He held up the fragment of the spear. ‘Do we not sharpen our blades on worthy bone?’ He rolled the fragment between his palms, enjoying the feel of it digging into his flesh. Once every eight years the surviving Kels met in the ruins of Ekran, to boast of their prowess, share tales of their victories, and match blades. A fair few of them were left, despite his best efforts. And theirs.
The time to return to Ekran was fast approaching. He interlaced his fingers, squeezing the fragment. It wriggled in his grip, like a leech, battening on the blood dripping from his palms. ‘Drink your fill, little one. Drink, and show me the way.’
At first, he had thought to possess the spear for himself. Such a weapon would make him mighty indeed. Then, he had thought to take it for Volundr. The skullgrinder was odd, as masters went, but then he was one of the legendary forgemasters. Ahazian was prepared to overlook a certain amount of oddness.
But the longer the hunt went on, the more his mind turned down crooked paths. The more he began to think of his fellow Kels, in their solitude. The greatest warriors Aqshy had ever seen. It was said that even Khorgos Khul himself had admitted such, in a rare unguarded moment. The Eight Lamentations were the greatest weapons ever forged by mortal hands. Thus, was it not fitting that they be wielded by the greatest warriors?
And what might such warriors do, then?
He frowned. These were not proper thoughts for a kel. A true kel did not seek to conquer, or rule. Those were the tasks of lesser men. A kel cared only for battle. A kel sought only the pure heart of the flower of carnage, for in war was the truest peace. But… but. A nagging thought, like a wound that would not heal.
‘What might we do then? And how best to do it?’ He spoke softly, to himself, to the fragment, to his weapons. He did not know which of them seemed the most curious as to his answer. He opened his hands, and let the fragment swing from its cord. Its facets gleamed with blood – his blood. He flexed his hands, suddenly aching to kill something. Anything. He forced himself to his feet and retrieved his weapons.
His steed whickered softly and snuffled at his bloody hands. He shoved its head aside and climbed into the saddle. ‘Come then, my friend. The night is cool and my blood is hot. Let us find something in need of killing.’ The fragment shivered against his chest. He laughed, low and fierce.
‘And then we will return to the hunt.’
Twelve
Gods And Rats
‘How goes it, grandson?’
Jorik Grunndrak, cogsmith and Master of the Excelsis Arsenal, flinched. Not much. Not even visibly. More a twitch of the soul. Even the stoutest spirit could not help but do so, when addressed by a god. ‘It goes well, Maker. The vermin are content to wait in their own filth, as is their nature. We are con
tent to kill them, as is ours.’
The cogsmith stood at the highest point of the Iron Bulls Bastion, composing the calculus of battle. Arcs of fire competed with material estimations in his head as he considered the problem at hand. It was an old problem, but one that required a new solution every time. The skaven were devious. Cunning. But simple. They flowed away from strength, towards weakness. Like water in a tunnel, they had an unerring ability to find the thinnest point and attack it. The key was to turn that strength back on them.
‘You don’t seem to have killed many, grandson.’
‘Well, they do eat their dead, Maker. Makes it difficult to assess casualties.’
Behind him, Grungni laughed softly. Even so, the sound of it pulsed through Jorik. He turned and looked up at the god. The Maker towered over him in a way no mortal being could. Grungni expanded outwards through all of Jorik’s perceptions – he was not simply there, but everywhere, in every moment and every thought. Like smoke filling a flue.
‘The lad?’ Jorik asked, bending to tap out his pipe on his heel. Down below, General Synor had unleashed the Old Lady. The steam tank rumbled across the broken ground on four ironbound wheels, belching a trail of smoke that stretched in its wake.
‘Away, and about my business.’
Jorik nodded and began to scrape the bowl of his pipe. ‘He is young yet, that one. In manling years, as well as ours.’
‘We were all young, once.’
‘True enough.’ Jorik found the act of scraping the bowl comforting. It calmed him in moments like this. A simple ritual, easily done. A way to keep the hands busy. ‘I have intimated that his absence is on my behalf. The others were most put out by his disappearance.’
‘Were they now?’
‘No,’ Jorik said. ‘I don’t think they even noticed, the fools.’ He looked down towards the tangled angles of the trench line, as the Old Lady gave a shout with its cannon and collapsed a rickety wooden structure, crushing the skaven within. Herzborg and the other gunmasters were down there somewhere, making their own calculations, closer to the battle. None of them had half the mind for it as young Volker. A good head for the algebra of chance, that one.
More cannons boomed below, a threnody of destruction. Vast gouges were torn in the mutilated earth. Both god and duardin, aficionados of such brutal melodies, nodded in satisfaction. ‘Good rate of fire on those helblasters,’ Grungni said.
‘Taught the gunners myself,’ Jorik said, with some pride.
Grungni chuckled. ‘You always did have an eye for destruction, grandson.’
‘Why do you call me that?’
‘What? Grandson?’ Grungni frowned. ‘Because you are, in a way. All of you, save those descended from my brothers or my sisters.’ He leaned close, enveloping Jorik in the smells of the forge. Jorik’s blade skittered, gouging the bowl of his pipe. ‘You know this, cogsmith. What’s wrong?’
Jorik grunted. ‘There is talk.’
Grungni said nothing.
Jorik paused, gathering his thoughts. It was no easy thing, to question a god. Especially this god. ‘Whispers, in the main. Heard at great distance, and unclearly. There are some in Azyrheim who mistake your absence for abandonment and your reticence for treachery. They say you have abandoned Sigmar’s great purpose, and their mistrust spills over onto us.’
‘And Sigmar?’
‘Says nothing.’
Grungni nodded. ‘Unsurprising. A god of few words, that one. Why explain, when he can exemplify? His fault has always been that he expects others to rise to meet him, rather than lowering himself to their level.’
‘Is that what you do, then?’ Jorik flicked a final bit of crusted ash from his pipe. ‘Are we so much lower than you, Maker?’
Grungni smiled. ‘Of course it’s so, grandson. I lower myself, as an elder must, to the level of the child. How else will they understand, if we do not speak plainly and with no artifice? A lesson I learned from Grimnir, who was always one for plain speaking.’ He sighed, and a stream of smoke escaped his lips, to join the cloud about his head. ‘I wish…’ He fell silent, and Jorik felt a sudden pang of sadness.
Gods were not supposed to die. And it was always hard when family passed. A double-seam of sorrow, then. He began to pack the bowl of his pipe with lichen and blackleaf. A god’s sorrow was like a leak in the roof of the tunnel. It dripped on the just and unjust alike. But the Maker was not the only one who had lost someone. There was hardly a duardin living who had not known loss, and grief. Jorik had sung death-songs for siblings, cousins and friends.
And down below, even more were dying. Selling blood and bone to buy time. To buy back ground sold at a high price. Today, it was the ratkin. Tomorrow, it would be orruks, or some petty chieftain, with the Dark Gods whispering in his ear. They would keep coming, until the last wall fell and the last banner was cast down. It was their nature.
‘Even as it is your nature to build,’ Grungni murmured, his words piercing the shadows of Jorik’s doubt. ‘I know, for it is mine. To repair the cracks and set the foundations right, whatever the cost. As it is Sigmar’s. That is why I swore my second oath to him, to prosecute his war as if it were my own.’
Jorik nodded. ‘So it is written, so it must be. And if it must be, let it be done well. For that is the duardin way. Whatever else, whatever comes, let the thing be done, and well.’ He looked up at the god. Alone, Grungni could end the battle below. With one swing of his hammer, he could smash the skaven and drive them from the field. But the gods of the duardin were not as the gods of men and they did not do for their children what their children could do for themselves. ‘But is it worth it?’
Grungni did not look at him. Instead, he gazed at the battlefield far below, the fires in his gaze quickening in time to those that raged across the ravaged ground. With every inhalation, Jorik smelled gunpowder and burning wood, as if the fires below were the same as the ones running through the god’s veins.
‘Worth can only be determined by time,’ Grungni said, finally. ‘In time, mayhap those who died here will be the heroes of generations unborn. Or they might be forgotten. Only time will tell.’
‘And what of your work, Maker? Is it, too, at the mercy of time?’
‘Mine most of all.’ Grungni studied his scarred palms. His fingers curled into massive fists, each the size of a cannonball and twice as deadly. ‘With these hands, I will fashion the tools by which we will uphold all that is, or I will craft a great folly and join my brother in the ignominy of oblivion.’ He paused. Laughed. ‘Those words were not meant for your ears.’
Jorik blinked. Grungni gestured. ‘Not you, grandson. Them.’ He pointed to a small group of ravens, perched nearby on the edge of the Bastion. He took a step towards them, and the birds croaked raucously, as if in warning. Grungni’s smile was awful to behold. ‘Where are the other ninety-five, then? Off and about some mischief, no doubt.’ He made as if to reach for them. The ravens exploded skywards, startled.
Grungni followed them, without moving. His form expanded, like a cloud of smoke vented from a chimney. He reached up, growing ever larger, until he had caught the slowest of the birds in his hand. The creature shrieked, in an almost-human voice, as its feathers burst into flame and melted from its thrashing body. Grungni studied the pale, screaming thing he held with eyes as vast and as hot as distant suns, and chuckled. The sound was like thunder, momentarily obscuring the clamour of the battlefield.
‘What a curious little thing you are. Like water, you flow from one shape to another, at a whim.’ Grungni shrank, and the white thing shrank as well, still screaming. Jorik watched in silence. For all that Grungni was an ancestor, he was still a god, with a god’s foibles and a god’s temper. Come not between the Maker and his anvil was a common saying among the clans of the Dispossessed for a very good reason.
‘And like water, the excess of you can be steamed away, until only what is
required remains.’ Grungni drew his hands, and what they held, close to his chest, as he resumed his former size. Jorik caught a glimpse of something small, like a baby bird, or a bit of bone, and quickly looked away. ‘Cunning, in a crude way. Much artistry, the Architect, but precious little skill. So much so, I often wonder who named him.’
He placed the whimpering thing in the pocket of his forge-apron, and dusted his hands. ‘The enemies of life march fast upon us, grandson. We share a quarry, and a desire. I hope the lad, Volker, is as capable as you claim.’
Jorik finished packing his pipe. ‘If he were not, I would not have recommended him.’ He cocked an eye at the god. ‘And you would not have seen his face in the fire.’
Grungni laughed, and Jorik shivered. The sound was like a hammer, ringing down on hot metal. ‘No. No, I wouldn’t have, would I?’ The god’s gaze was as hot as dragon fire, as he turned back towards the battle. ‘There’s a daemon down there. Only a little one, but I can smell it from here. What does it want, I wonder?’ He patted his apron pocket. ‘I suppose we shall see.’
Jorik made to light his pipe. Grungni snapped his fingers, and a spark leapt into the bowl. Jorik puffed slowly, surprised. Grungni nodded.
‘Yes. We shall see, soon enough.’
Kretch Warpfang, Grand High Clawmaster of Clan Rictus, looked out over the devastation and slumped back into the cushions of his palanquin with a sigh. Another dozen clawbands cut to shreds. Another handful of clawleaders executed. The latest assault by his forces had been thrown back in disarray and the trenches were still occupied by man-things.
A shambles, then. A man-thing word to describe an utter failure. A good word, Warpfang thought. Man-things made many good things. And skaven made them better. But not at this particular moment. They had got closer, this time. But not close enough. Never close enough.
