Orion: The Council of Beasts

by Darius Hinks

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Warhammer

  Principal Characters

  Winter

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Spring

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  About The Author

  Legal

  eBook license

  This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

  At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

  But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

  Principal Characters

  THE DEEPWOOD HOST

  Ariel the Mage Queen

  Orion the Consort-King

  Finavar wardancer; the Darkling Prince

  Jokleel wardancer; younger brother of Finavar

  Sibaris wardancer; great grandson of Mälloch the Elder

  Caorann wardancer; Finavar’s oldest friend

  Thuralin old, crippled wardancer

  Alhena wardancer; Thuralin’s daughter

  Lady Ordaana highborn spellweaver; former Warden of Locrimere

  Lord Beldeas highborn; husband of Ordaana

  Prince Haldus Warhawk Rider; Lord of Arum Tor

  Avernus Warhawk Rider; kinsman of Prince Haldus

  Lord Cyanos Warhawk Rider; ally of Prince Haldus

  Lord Thenot noble from the Alarin Hills; cousin of Prince Haldus

  Clorana daughter of Prince Haldus

  Damára former lover of Prince Haldus

  Lord Findol noble from the Pine Crags

  Lord Calaingor Warden of the Cromlech of Cadai; powerful mage

  Lady Ailerann servant of Lord Calaingor

  Calepine warrior from the plains of Cavaroc

  Laelia Ariel’s handmaiden; powerful mage

  Atolmis the Hunter Wild Rider; Pyrewarden; Priest of Kurnous

  Olachas Wild Rider; Pyrewarden; Priest of Kurnous

  Naeith revered Prophetess

  Mälloch the Elder Lord of the Fiùrann

  BRANCHWRAITHS

  Drycha

  Liris

  Melusine

  FOREST SPIRITS

  Bruithír guardian of the Wildwood

  Zephyr forest spirit; resembles a playful child

  Sativus forest spirit; resembles a great, noble stag

  The Wrach Keeper of the Dark Paths; the Blind Guide

  Usnarr forest spirit; resembles a white wolf

  Amphion forest spirit; resembles a great eagle

  Tamarix forest dragon

  Tanos forest dragon

  DAEMONS

  Alkhor

  Ganglion

  OTHERS

  Clara human sorcerer from the Amber Hills

  Chapter One

  ‘Awake, Lord of the Wood.’

  The voice was brittle and black with hate; a cruel rustle on the breeze.

  Finavar opened his eyes and all he saw was darkness.

  He cursed, but his words were lost as a raucous din rose up to greet him. Music. Wild stabs of sound that cut through the void. A tune so violent that he fell away from it, tumbling backwards over unforgiving earth. He clawed at the dark but there was nothing to claw – just the oily ghosts of his own retina.

  ‘Awake, brother,’ said the voice, coming closer and changing its tone. The hate vanished and Finavar wondered if it had ever been there. Perhaps he had imagined it? Perhaps it was just the echo of a dream? The words were soft now, conciliatory even. Brother. Did he have a brother? Memories circled in his mind; memories too sad to look squarely in the eye.

  The music vanished and the words echoed around Finavar’s skull. Then he sensed a movement to his right and turned towards it.

  Pain splashed, acid-like, across his skin. It twisted his fingers into claws, arched his back and revealed a surprising truth.

  I’m not dead.

  He was shocked by the idea and his lungs were far from convinced, refusing to drag anything into his chest. His memory was no kinder. However hard he tried to avert his gaze, it threw harrowing scenes at him. The ridiculous faith of his youth. A grinning fool, laughing defiantly as he led his followers to slaughter. An eager herdsman for the Consort-King.

  Then he pictured the result of his hubris – the vision that had been cowering in the deepest recesses of his mind. It rose up before him in vivid blue and red: his little brother, Jokleel, lying on a branch with his throat torn open. Sacrificed on the altar of Orion’s rage.

  The music struck up again and Finavar shuddered.

  Another ghostly shape passed by.

  ‘Brother,’ said the voice again.

  Surprise tricked Finavar’s lungs into life and he snatched a breath.

  ‘Jokleel?’ he managed to say.

  His memories were a sickening kaleidoscope and he felt horribly weak. Could he be confusing nightmares with the truth?

  ‘You’re dead,’ he gasped, lurching in the direction of the movement.

  As he grew accustomed to the darkness Finavar saw tall, crooked figures looking down at him. The music makers. For a moment he thought they were more cruel shadows dredged up from his past. Then he heard the crack of blistered, bark-like limbs and knew they were real. The sound cut through the music and froze him in his tracks. They were all around him. The darkness was alive. They moved closer and he made out shards of deadwood, jerking and sliding like armour. Splintered, silvery shells, wrapped around nothing. Where there might have been faces, there were just crooked, glimmering holes. Studs of pale, green fire. As the frigid lights turned towards him, Finavar saw nothing but hate.

  ‘Brother,’ came the gentle voice again and Finavar threw his thoughts at the sound, scrambling away from the deadwood choir. He had seen forest spirits before, of course, countless times, but these were different. The fury pouring from their eyes made him want to scream.

  He crawled away from the spirits and realised that he was climbing a slope. The thought gave him a surge of hope. Wherever he was, it had shape, and form, and maybe it could be escaped.

  The darkness lifted as he climbed, revealing
something more familiar: a tumbling bank of hawthorn and fern, threaded roots and ancient, lichened trunks. These sinuous shapes were a mirror of the forest he knew, but the mirror was warped to the point of madness. Everything was knotted, brutal and life-crushing. And all of it was in motion – straining and coiling around him as he tried to climb. He wrenched himself free and shook his head. The forest was always hungry, but even at the height of summer, roots did not move with such speed.

  The Wildwood.

  There could be no mistake. His journeys had led him to the darkest heart of the forest. Along with the realisation came more memories. Before he had time to suppress the image, he saw the imperious sneer of Lady Ordaana. His pulse hammered. She had laid the entire forest’s doom at his feet. She had given him the mantle of betrayer. More memories followed in quick succession. He saw the lords and ladies of the Silvam Dale, horrified by his supposed crimes. He saw the fury of the Enchanter, Prince Elatior, as he banished him to the Wildwood.

  Ordaana is the traitor! Pain and grief dissolved in a swell of outrage. He was furious that he had been so blind. She brought this plague down on us, he thought. I’m just the fool who failed to see it.

  Needles of pain sliced into his arm as a branch crushed itself around him, sinking claw-like twigs into his muscles. As he wrenched his arm free, Finavar saw why his body was in such pain. Sheets of skin were missing from his torso – torn away, leaving an ugly patchwork of wounds. What little of his skin remained was slick with blood. He looked like a scrap of meat, left to rot after a feast.

  Another memory. He saw the ancient noble, Mälloch the Elder and the impetuous youth, Sibaris. They had brought him here. They had bound him to the waystone and called on the Wildwood to take him, but they were not to blame. It was her. She had done this to him.

  How could he have abandoned his friends and put his faith in such a lunatic? Finally, everything came back to him. He pictured his brave, devoted kinsmen: Caorann, with his booming laugh and his lust for life; Alhena with her dangerous, determined stare; even dour old Thuralin, crook-backed and bitter – they were his family. The only one he had ever known. Grief had driven him from his senses, but Ordaana had driven him from his kin. She had poisoned him until he no longer knew friend from foe.

  ‘I’ll find them,’ he said. Determination trilled through his veins. Whatever evil Ordaana had perpetrated, Finavar knew that she could not break the will of his kindred. Not if they stood together, as they once did.

  Now, for the first time in months, he remembered courage. And it was a courage tempered by all that he had seen. It was no playful hunt that he sought; no childish game. He sought the salvation of his people.

  After months of doubt and confusion, his mind grew clear.

  He straightened his back and allowed a cold smile to cross his lips. ‘I will find them.’

  He tried to move, but almost fell: his legs were bound. Soft, loamy earth had swallowed his feet and roots had shackled his ankles. Tall shapes loomed over him – the bark-clad singers had followed him up the incline.

  Their long, crooked fingers stretched out towards him.

  ‘No!’ he howled and wrenched himself free, shedding branches and skin and sprinting up the slope. His soul was a tiny flicker of hope and he would not let it die.

  Finavar reached the summit and found himself in a column of grey-green light, but even here there was no glimpse of sky; the brittle tracery overhead was just a frame for ever more distant canopies of leaves. And they in turn led to a remote, emerald vault that seemed to make up the heavens themselves. The forest towered over him. He felt like an infinitesimal sea creature, crawling across an abyssal ocean floor, destined to never glimpse the sky.

  There was enough light, however, for Finavar to see how ruined his body was. What little strength he had regained during his hunt for Orion had been stripped away. Pennants of tattered skin hung from his ribs and stomach. The sight sickened him, but it only hardened his resolve. He pictured his friends as he had last seen them – Alhena and her father, rising from a campfire to greet him with love in their eyes. How could he have not seen that? Why did he argue with Thuralin? Even that frivolous youth, Sibaris, had believed in him. How could he have spurned such devotion in favour of Ordaana’s bile? In the oppressive gloom of the Wildwood, Finavar saw one thing clearly: his place was with his own kind. The poets and dancers. The children of Loec.

  There was an explosion of sound to Finavar’s left and he whirled around, looking back down the path.

  There was nothing to see. The musicians had vanished. He had simply trodden on a fallen branch and caused its leaves to rattle. Finavar peered back the way he had come. For a moment, he thought he saw something – dozens of smaller shapes, moving through the gloom, dragging a heavy load, but then they were gone.

  Finavar shook his head. He had sung enough tales of the Wildwood to know that these paths crawled with malice. These were the roots of the world. There were beings in the Wildwood that lived outside of history – outside of nature, even. Any one of them would destroy him without a moment’s thought. Who knew what he might have glimpsed?

  ‘How am I alive?’ he wondered aloud. The spirits had looked at him so hungrily, but now there was only the liquid dark.

  His flesh was in shreds but he still drew breath. The Wildwood was a death sentence, every child knew as much. How was he still able to walk?

  Finavar looked down the opposite side of the slope and saw something smaller. Another figure. Pale and graceful as it raced away from him through the trees.

  ‘Brother.’

  The word came to him so faintly he thought it might be the breeze.

  ‘Jokleel?’ he said, stumbling off in pursuit. He could recall his brother’s pyre with horrible clarity, but still his heart swelled. ‘Is that you?’

  The figure slipped away into the shadows, and vanished from view, but, when he looked around, Finavar realised that he was now on a winding path. The trees and shrubs had parted to reveal a track gilded with dead leaves. They glimmered in the half light. Sheets of hammered copper. The lights dazzled and confused him. As he stared at the glinting shapes his mind slipped into the past. He was leading Jokleel through the cool glades of their home, Locrimere, singing songs of the Horned God, Kurnous and his bloody emissary, Orion.

  Finavar frowned and shook his head. He tried to bring his mind back to the shifting gloom of the Wildwood. He sensed danger all around. ‘Why am I still alive?’ he wondered again.

  He stepped further and saw that the path continued on into the forest, winding and rolling away from him. A pale rope, tossed across a night-black pool. The lights had left him confused, blurring memory, truth and dreams.

  The darkness on either side pressed closer and fear threatened to overcome him. He wondered, for a moment, what had drawn him onto the path; then he pictured the face of his brother and hurried on.

  ‘I’m here,’ he whispered, cradling an impossible hope.

  Drycha watched Finavar lurching towards her and felt a flicker of pity. The wardancer made a pathetic sight. He looked like a disparate jumble of bones that might fall apart at any moment. His eyes rolled, feverish and wide as they tried to latch onto hers.

  Once she was sure he was following the right path, Drycha turned and raced away, trailing one last ‘Brother,’ before abandoning her disguise to the darkness.

  Shadows rolled and tumbled in her wake as she glided through the undergrowth. Gradually, they formed into ranks of figures. Brittle-limbed wraiths, keeping pace with her as she moved. Her army had grown since she left Coeddil. She could barely comprehend the power she was wielding.

  Liris clicked and clacked to her side. ‘We are holding them back,’ she said.

  Drycha heard the shock in her voice but did not acknowledge it. ‘We must,’ she said simply, peering into the shadows.

  She sensed that Liris was now afraid of her. The thought saddened her but she could understand. The Ancient One had shared something with her – o
nly a fraction of his vision but enough that it had almost overwhelmed her. She was no longer the same as her sisters. The Ancient One had set her apart. He had apportioned a great task to her and given her the foresight to achieve it. At his bidding, the universe had unfurled itself at her feet. She could see everything. Even things she knew she should not. She had struck deals with those she despised and sworn sickening oaths, but her path was clear. The Great Weave of life was spread out before her like a cruel, bewildering tapestry. What a terrible, wonderful responsibility. Every thread of the weave was more intricate and beautiful than the last. She could focus on a single thread and lose herself for all eternity, so she kept her thoughts fixed on one spot; one fascinating detail. For weeks now she had been able to see it: Finavar, reborn as a god, his matted hair replaced by a magnificent crown of antlers. Finavar, charging through the forest on hooves that shook the leaves from the boughs.

  Her master had revealed a truth known only to the most subtle of minds. This pathetic, dying wreck was destined to become a king. When she led him, finally, to his death, she would be unbinding the forest from centuries of misrule. The Shadow-glades would be free. Her sisters would grow, untrammelled by their feeble, mortal guardians. They would tear down the last of the waystones and lead the whole forest to war, with Finavar’s flesh as a banner. The Great Weave would tighten and crush. The forest would shrug itself free. Drycha would rid it of disease, mortals and plague and then she would tear the daemon from its heart.

  From this one death, life would begin again.

  The Ancient One and the other elders did not need these short-lived parasites to survive. Her master had shown her the truth. The ancients had endured since the beginning of the world. And they would endure again. She would pay back every brutal defilement the interlopers had inflicted on her precious wards.

  The thought wiped away any trace of pity she felt for Finavar. Deaths hung around her like one of the interlopers’ pendants. Every pustule and tumour haunted her thoughts. Every lifeless creature stared back at her. She had let the daemon live, all those centuries ago. She had unwittingly preserved Alkhor’s power beneath the roots of the forest. She had sown it, like a poisonous seed. Every broken strand of the Great Weave was because of her actions. She stumbled to a halt and clutched her head. For a moment, her confidence failed as she felt the weight of her shame. She saw a once-powerful bear, bloated and torn apart by disease. She remembered the horror of taking its life.