by Darius Hinks
Orion leapt as Nuin passed overhead and hauled himself up onto her back as she swooped away after the daemon.
Huge as Nuin was, she struggled for a moment under the weight of her new passenger. Then she managed to regain control and she hurtled across the battlefield. The two armies were milling around in confusion as Alkhor fled, still screaming.
Nuin carried Orion closer, swooping through the flies so fast that he could do little but hang on to her feathers.
They emerged from the clouds just a few feet from the daemon’s face. The combination of the daemon’s face, seen at close quarters, and the dreadful smell oozing from its guts was horrific. Orion gagged but managed to look his foe in the eye.
Alkhor looked terrified. Rather than attack Orion, he reached up to his face, gingerly touching a piece of silver, stuck in his grey skin, just below his eye. As he fingered the knife, his expression changed to one of relief.
Orion saw that the noblewoman’s blade had barely broken the daemon’s skin.
The look of terror had given Orion his cue though. Knowing how the afraid the daemon was of the knife, he leapt from Nuin’s back and rammed the blade deeper into Alkhor’s cheek.
He was engulfed by an explosion of gas and flies and then, as Alkhor’s face collapsed beneath him, he fell into the daemon’s body.
Rather than innards, Orion found himself falling through a whirl of shapes and colours. His mind tried to comprehend the incredible sights washing over him, but it could not. Orion sensed that he was passing through a place of pure magic – pure Chaos. His own body began to dissolve. Countless visions swam out of the madness, dazzling him with their clarity. He saw gods and mortals locked in an endless battle. He saw oceans of fire and rivers of stone. He saw his people battling their metal-clad brethren from across the sea. Finally, he saw a dragon-helmed warrior, lunging towards him with a magic-charged sword and death in his eyes. Then the images began to fade.
And so I die, he thought. The concept seemed oddly abstract – as though he were thinking of someone else. Then another, far more worrying idea came to him. Did I save the forest?
He fell deeper into the whirl of colours with no sense of direction.
Then, as his body grew more faint, other shapes emerged from his chest.
His forebears gathered around him – the other Orions, staring at him with stern, unyielding expressions. Your work is not done, they seemed to say as they dragged him in a new direction.
There was another explosion and Orion was battered by noise, sound and smell: his ears filled with the sound of screaming crows and whirring flies, his eyes filled with the hideous colours of the garden and his nose recoiled from the revolting stink of Alkhor’s flesh.
The ghost Orions remained visible for just a few more seconds as they hurled him away from the daemon.
Orion’s breath exploded from his lungs as he slammed down into a pool of pus and pallid, grass-like toadstools.
Alkhor was directly above him. There was a wide gash running all the way from his face to his belly. Through the hole Orion could see nothing – the same mind-numbing nothing that was hanging in the sky just a few feet away.
The daemon’s scream shifted up several octaves until it passed beyond the point of being audible. His mountainous body was shaking so fast that its outline became blurred. The wound grew wider and then, with an odd tearing sound, it joined with the hole in the air.
At the moment the two holes joined, the thousands of flies that filled the garden began hurtling towards the rift, like smoke sucked up a chimney.
Soon the flies were streaming through the garden in a deafening torrent, causing the two stunned armies to falter and cower.
The flies were followed by the crows. Hundreds upon hundreds of the birds started spinning and tumbling towards the hole in the sky, however furiously they attempted to fly elsewhere.
Orion looked back at Alkhor and saw that the same invisible current was tugging at the daemon’s juddering flesh. Shreds of grey, rotten skin tore free, flying through the air like the pennants of a conquered fortress.
As the wind pulled him Alkhor slumped sideways. There was a loud crack as one of his horns snapped and hurtled from the world.
Oddly, Orion could feel nothing tugging at his own body. As he climbed from the pool, he was able to stand quite easily, despite the storm of debris that was roaring past him.
He looked back to the opening of the gulley, where his army was still waiting, and saw that they too were unaffected.
Their foes were not so lucky. Orion saw that the crimson daemons of Khorne, along with the few remaining plague daemons, were staggering and tumbling towards the hole formed by Alkhor’s collapsing body.
The roaring grew to a deafening volume and Orion clamped his hands over his ears as the daemonhost was wrenched, screaming and howling out of sight.
As the last few monstrosities flew through the air and vanished from view, Alkhor folded in on himself, like water spiralling down a hole.
Then they were gone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
As always, the hunt roared on. The timeless ritual of Kurnous. Ever brutal. Ever wild. Ever pure. The beasts, nobles and spirits of the deepwood host charged through the rotten trees, clawing and screaming as they went, drawn by the howl of their feral king. Only Ariel remained, immune to her lover’s call; watching them leave. Orion and his hounds had already vanished from view, but his horn was still audible over the din, demanding that his subjects submit to the wildness in their soul. She saw familiar faces, bobbing like flotsam in the crowd. Haldus was there, sprinting after his king with pride and madness in his eyes. Even her own handmaidens had been unable to resist such animal fury. With the power of the entire forest behind him, Orion had broken the barrier between the worlds. He had become Kurnous. Dragons tumbled in his wake, roaring and looping as they revelled in the violence.
Ariel’s heart swelled at the sight and for a while she could do nothing but watch. This tribute of blood was what made them whole. This was the pulse of the forest. Then, as the noise and clamour of the hunt faded into the distance, heading for the borders of the forest, Ariel’s heart slowed. As Orion’s horn grew fainter, she felt as though she were emerging from a heady dream. She realised, to her amazement that even she had been possessed by Orion’s power. She smiled, delighted that her eternal consort had become so powerful. Then she turned around and her smile froze.
Ariel was surrounded by the wreckage of their home. As the hunt headed west, towards the wild heath, an eerie quiet descended over the remains of Alkhor’s garden. The plague daemons had vanished and, without Alkhor’s magic to sustain it, the gaudy fungus that covered the forest was shrivelling and withering, crumbling to ash in the sunlight that had been revealed by the destruction of the flies.
The Mage Queen looked up and saw that the sky was as clear and blue as it should be. There was a woodlark spiralling overhead, rising and falling as it sang. She watched it for a while, but the thought of spring gave her no pleasure. They had won the battle. The enemy was gone. The Wild Hunt had begun and the seasons would return, but as Ariel headed back towards Còlgarran Pass it was with a weary, dejected air. She picked her way through the mounds of corpses, helping those she could and realised the full horror of their loss. As the sounds of the hunt faded, its madness left her and she saw the brutal, pitiful truth: the forest was dead.
She saw a young wardancer with a shaven head, sitting in the lee of a bare, broken stump. She was cradling the corpse of a noblewoman and singing to her in cracked, husky tones. Ariel stopped to listen and realised it was a lullaby. She recognised a couple of lines and mouthed the words.
Sleep my child, in new green leaves;
Drop your worries from the eaves.
There was so much pain in the wardancer’s voice that Ariel struggled to contain her own grief. She staggered to a halt and closed her eyes. The plaintive song seemed to be an elegy for the whole forest. Ariel looked around with growing shoc
k. Where the plague had receded it left nothing but a barren wasteland. The blight was falling from the few trees that still stood, but all that remained were broken, lifeless shells. They had lost their soul.
Ariel pounded her wings and launched herself from the battlefield, flying low through Còlgarran Pass and out into the wider forest. Wherever she looked, the story was the same. The forest was a shattered corpse. Its spirit had gone.
She made a haphazard course over a latticework of bare branches but, however far she flew, the song of the wardancer still rang in her ears, haunting her with its grief.
After hours of mindless wandering, Ariel finally landed on a muddy verge, near the banks of a fast-flowing stream.
‘What do I do?’ she said, staring at her pale reflection. Her robes were in tatters and stained with daemon-blood and she was still clutching the sword she had stolen from the corpse. She tossed the blade in the stream. The water was clear and she saw the blade settle onto the sun-dappled rocks.
No answer came and Ariel clutched her head. She was born to preserve and heal, but the forest was beyond her help. The physical damage would be nothing if its soul was still intact, but Ariel knew that it was not. This was a far more profound hurt. The plague had stolen the very essence of her home. And she herself had played her part. She and her consort had killed the Great Stag. With Sativus gone, there could be no healing. The forest spirits would scatter and fade.
There was a muffled clatter as the sword moved to one side, nudged by the current of the water. The morning light flashed along its blade and threw an odd shape over the stone. It was as though the blade were pointing to something – something downstream.
Ariel stepped into the water. The cold clamped around her naked feet, aching deep in her bones, but there was something cleansing about the sensation that calmed her. She knelt and washed away the grime of battle, dunking her head beneath the surface and gasping at the cold. Then, when she was clean, she began walking downstream.
The sensation of the current, gently hurrying her across the rocks, gave her an odd sense of purpose. Despite her despair, she gave in to the feeling, stepping quickly over the silt and stones.
The sun rolled higher as she spent the morning in this pointless pursuit. Then, as midday turned the stream into a sheet of dazzling gold, she noticed something struggling on the far bank – thrashing and rolling in the shallows. She bent down to examine it and saw that it was a tiny, lime-green frog.
Ariel held it gently in her palm, feeling the patter of its tiny heart against her skin. The creature had broken its back and was clearly in pain.
Shame washed over Ariel. How could she have forgotten herself like this? The forest may have lost its lifeblood, but she had not. The gods had given her a clear purpose. She could not save the forest, but if there was one soul that she could nurse back to health, it was her duty to do so.
As her determination returned, so did her attendants. As Ariel lifted the frog to her mouth and blew over its skin, her robes flickered into life – glittering with bestial spirits.
Her breath washed over the frog like a coat of liquid silver, shimmering and flashing, before slipping in through its mouth.
The frog shivered in Ariel’s palm and she smiled as she saw its back straighten.
Then she frowned. The creature was healed, but it continued to shiver. The silver light blazed brighter, until Ariel had to shield her eyes.
The frog continued shivering in her palm and, when she looked again, she saw that it had been transformed into a tiny fledgling.
Confused, she laid it carefully on the ground, in a bed of ashes and scarred earth.
The bird flew away from her, singing cheerfully as it soared over the dead trees.
Ariel flew after it, with a growing sense of wonder.
The bird landed near the hollow trunk of a blasted oak, then, as Ariel landed nearby, it vanished inside.
She moved to follow, then stumbled to a halt as it re-emerged, transformed for a second time. Ariel laughed, recognising an old friend. The bird had become a proud, white stag.
The animal trotted out into the light, its eyes locked on Ariel.
She noticed something rattling around its neck and reached out to touch it.
The stag did not flinch, but continued watching her calmly with its huge, black eyes.
Ariel frowned as she touched the object. It was a snake-bone necklace.
Then, as Ariel’s fingers brushed against the stag’s neck, the animal bolted, leaving her alone next to the hollow trunk.
Ariel’s eyes filled with tears and she began to smile.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Darius Hinks’s first novel, Warrior Priest, won the David Gemmell Morningstar award for best newcomer. Since then he has carved a bloody swathe through the Warhammer world in works such as The Island of Blood, Sigvald and Razumov’s Tomb, along with the epic Orion trilogy, consisting of The Vaults of Winter, Tears of Isha and The Council of Beasts. He has also ventured into the Warhammer 40,000 universe with the Space Marine Battles novella Sanctus.
For Arthur. (I promise to come out of the shed now.)
With thanks to Kathryn, Nick and Eddie for helping
me find a safe path through the forest.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
© Games Workshop Limited 2014. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Slawomir Maniak.
Internal illustration by Nuala Kinrade.
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ISBN 978-1-78251-549-4
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