As a warrior and an Emperor, his was a life steeped in battle and blood, and to think that he would live forever was foolish indeed. But as he stared deep into the bleak, emptiness of the cairns of these long forgotten kings, he was touched by an altogether greater worry. He chuckled softly to himself, dispelling the gloom that had crept on him with every step Taalhorsa had taken.
‘Sire?’ asked Wenyld, twisting in his saddle. ‘Did you say something?’
‘No, it’s nothing,’ said Sigmar. ‘I was merely amused by my vanity.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Sigmar pointed to a barrow with a yawning entrance and a crumpled skeleton lying in a heap of brittle bones. ‘I look at these violated tombs and my greatest fear is not dying. Do you know what my greatest fear is, Wenyld?’
‘No, sire.’
‘I fear being forgotten.’
‘You will never be forgotten, my lord,’ Wenyld assured him. ‘How could you be? You are the first Emperor, the founder of the Empire and the ruler of the lands. You and the Empire are one and the same. Without you, there is no Empire.’
Sigmar smiled and said, ‘I imagine the kings buried in these tombs thought the same, but do any of us remember them? Do the saga poets still sing of their mighty deeds? What is left of them but dust and bones? No, Wenyld, it is only the vanity of men that allows us to think we will always be remembered.’
‘I disagree,’ said Cuthwin. ‘These men may have been kings, but what did they do of note? Did they found an empire? Did they save the race of men from extinction time and time again? Their names and deeds may have been forgotten, but armies will march with your name on their lips for as long as there are men to speak it.’
As Sigmar listened to Cuthwin, the image of the vast column of men with bloodied halberds and red swords the necromancer had shown him in the final moments of their battle returned to him. Those men had carried banners with his name emblazoned upon them, and bore talismans of the twin-tailed comet as they marched from a scene of wanton slaughter.
‘You should not speak of such things,’ said Leodan, surprising everyone. The horseman was taciturn at the best of times, but he had barely spoken since they had ridden from Reikdorf all those weeks ago.
‘Why not?’
‘You bring the notice of the gods by speaking of immortality,’ said Leodan. ‘Men should not dream of it, for immortality is for the gods alone and they are jealous of their eternal lives.’
‘We weren’t talking about immortality,’ said Cuthwin.
‘Yes, you were,’ said Leodan, raking back his spurs and riding to the head of the snaking trail of mounted men with his lance-tip glittering in the sun.
‘What was that about?’ wondered Wenyld.
Sigmar had no answer for him and they lapsed into silence as the day wore on and the terrain became ever more difficult. The ground grew rougher and steeper, the path through the tree-shawled gorges getting narrower and narrower. These were mountains that did not suffer living things to move freely through their deep valleys and forests without effort.
At every turn in the path Sigmar felt as though a hundred eyes were upon the hunting party, hidden spies stalking them on the cliffs above or malevolent observers watching from behind every crag or in every shadow. The sense of threat and imminent danger was palpable, and he knew he wasn’t the only one feeling it. Many times, horses stumbled and men cried out as they swung out over towering drops when they took their gaze from the path to seek out what might be a lurking enemy above.
A chill wind howled down through the gorge, a knifing cold that sought out every gap in a cloak or every thin patch of cloth covering a man’s bare skin. Sigmar shivered in his armour and wished he’d worn the padded undershirt Count Marius had sent from Marburg. Ostentatiously decorated with embroidered stitching and needlepoint images of hammers and comets, Wolfgart had laughed at the sight of it, but it was undeniably warm and of sublime quality. Say what you wanted about Marius, he understood the value of quality goods.
Thinking of Wolfgart brought a rueful smile to Sigmar’s lips. He missed his old friend, and dearly wished Wolfgart could have accompanied him on this ride into the mountains. The rogue had wanted to come, but one look at Maedbh’s eyes and her swollen belly had convinced him that to leave Reikdorf would be a mistake. The old women who knew of such things had told Maedbh she was to bear a son, and Wolfgart’s joy was complete. The boy would be born within three cycles of the moon, and Wolfgart had made Sigmar swear he would return in time for his son’s birth.
In any case, Wolfgart had no choice but to remain in Reikdorf. With the departure of Alfgeir into the snow-wilds of the north, someone had to assume the mantle of Marshal of the Reik. Though Wolfgart had protested, Sigmar had known there was no one else who could follow the example Alfgeir had set. In a solemn ceremony, attended by no less than three of the Empire’s counts, Sigmar had presented the glittering sword of the Marshal to his oldest friend, who had grinned like it was his Blood Night all over again.
A clatter of falling rock from ahead shook Sigmar from his nostalgic reverie. He looked for the source of the sound, seeing a scree of loose stone tumbling from the cliffs above them. Sigmar’s eyes narrowed as he saw a flitting shadow in the thick brush that clustered at the edge of the high cliff like the bushy eyebrows of an old man.
Sigmar heard the creak of seasoned yew and looked over to see Cuthwin had his bowstring pulled back and a goose-feathered arrow nocked. The huntsman scanned the clifftop, but eventually eased the string back, but did not replace the arrow in his quiver.
‘What did you see?’ asked Sigmar.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Cuthwin. ‘Maybe a coney or a fox.’
‘Or something more dangerous perhaps?’
Cuthwin nodded, and Sigmar saw how it irked him to be unsure of anything.
‘Keep a wary eye out,’ said Sigmar and Cuthwin nodded, keeping one eye on the narrow path and one on the cliffs above them.
The path continued to wind up the angled slope of a white cliff that glittered with golden dust embedded in the rocks, and Sigmar wondered why none of the dwarf holds had constructed some iron structure to hew it from the cliff. Perhaps it was too dangerous or perhaps it wasn’t even gold. Sigmar was no miner, and the fact that none of Alaric’s dwarfs had given the cliff so much as a second glance told him that it probably wasn’t gold.
Alaric was waiting for him at a bend in the track, where a jutting boulder with a flat face projected out into space. Alaric stood with his hands braced on his hip, standing at the very tip of the boulder, with nothing to prevent him from falling thousands of feet to his death. The winds howled around the dwarf, but he seemed not to notice.
‘Hard going,’ said Sigmar, drawing in the reins.
‘This?’ said Alaric with a distracted air. ‘This is a gentle stroll compared to some of the galleries below Karaz-a-Karak. At least there you have good stone above your head, and not this damned empty sky.’
‘It’s hard going to us,’ said Sigmar.
‘Aye, you’re only manlings, it’s true,’ agreed Alaric. ‘You like your land flat and covered with trees and growing things.’
‘What are you doing out there on that rock?’
Alaric looked around, as though he’d been unaware of where he was standing. He stamped down on the boulder, and Sigmar winced, half expecting it to shear off and carry the dwarf to his doom. Alaric saw his face and grinned.
‘I forget your kind doesn’t know stone like we do,’ he said. ‘I was reading the stone ahead of us, lad.’
‘What is it saying?’ asked Sigmar, who knew not to mock such statements.
‘Hard to say,’ replied Alaric. ‘They don’t speak quietly here. These mountains didn’t just rise up nice and calm. No, they were brought into the world with violence and fire and earthquakes that would split your Empire into shards if they happened now. I still hear the echoes of that.’
Alaric extended his arms to the north and west. ‘
The Black Mountains in the north and the Grey Mountains in the west. Tell me what you see when you look at them.’
Sigmar shielded his eyes from the lowering sun with the palm of his hand and looked out over the titanic peaks of the Black Mountains. The jagged, crimson-hued mountain that men of the south knew as Blood Peak reared over a gnarled mob of craggy summits that stretched into the clouds of the far distance. Dots of bird flocks swirled over the nearest peaks, like crows over a battlefield.
Only the misty edges of the Grey Mountains could be seen from here, the sharp slopes cowled in patches of snow. What lay beyond those mountains was a mystery to the men of the Empire. Only the Bretonii had dared venture into the ice-locked passes that led to the lands beyond, and no one had seen or heard from that lost tribe in nearly two decades. Twilight was fast approaching, and there was little Sigmar could see that had attracted Alaric’s attention.
‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed to see,’ he said at last.
‘Do you see the mountains moving?’ asked Alaric.
‘Moving? No, of course not,’ said Sigmar. ‘Mountains don’t move.’
‘Ah, lad, of course they do,’ said Alaric with the amusement of someone who knows the punchline of a jest. ‘This world is a lot less solid than you manlings think it is. All this land, these mountains and the oceans, they drift on giant beds of stone that float on vast seas of molten rock. They move and grind against each other, and sometimes they collide to raise giant mountain ranges like this. A long time ago, before we dwarfs even built our holds, two of those beds collided, and the shock of that threw up these mountains.’
‘You’re mocking me,’ said Sigmar.
‘Not at all. Aye, these beds of rock move so slowly that you fast-moving races don’t see it, but dig the rock for long enough and you’d soon know. The rock bed to the north scraped up over this one and the tail end of the northern mountains rode roughshod over the mountains of the south to make this almighty snarl-up of peaks and valleys and this pass.’
‘This is a pass?’ said Sigmar. ‘I thought this was just some secret path you knew. Ulric’s breath, the very teeth of winter are blowing down on us.’
‘It’s a pass right enough,’ said Alaric. ‘Yonder to the north-east is Karak Hirn, but our path won’t take us anywhere near there. Shame, I’d have liked to see the great wind cavern and hear it bellow.’
‘Alaric, why are you telling me this?’ asked Sigmar.
‘I’m not sure,’ said the dwarf, with a soft sigh. ‘I suppose I just want you to understand the rock and stone like I do. There’s history here, and memory too. These mountains have seen their fair share of dying, and I can feel there’s more on the way. The monster we’re hunting came this way, and he wasn’t the only one.’
‘My scout didn’t see any signs of anything else,’ said Sigmar.
‘Your scout doesn’t know rock like I do.’
‘You think there’s trouble coming?’
‘In these mountains, there’s always trouble coming,’ said Alaric.
They found a place to camp for the night only a little farther up the pass, a projecting lip of rock that Sigmar would have called a narrow plateau, but which Alaric seemed to think was a sweeping plain. In any case, the point was moot, as there was good water streaming down the cliff in a sparkling waterfall, and screes of tumbled boulders that offered plentiful cover and places for sentries to watch the approaches.
The riders saw to their horses first, hobbling them in the centre of the flat ground and rubbing down their lathered flanks with handfuls of scrub grass warily pulled from the edge of the cliff. Each beast was then led in turn to the natural trough at the base of the waterfall and allowed to slake their thirst in the bitingly cold water.
With the mounts settled, the men attended to their own needs, filling waterskins and breaking out hard bread and salted meat from the horses’ panniers as the darkness began to close on the mountains like a fist. Fires were lit against the cliff and the reflected heat dispelled the worst of the bitter wind blowing down from the heart of the Vaults. Warriors sat close to the fires, untying their heavy furs to allow the warmth to reach their bodies.
Alaric’s dwarfs sat in a small circle around their own fire, though none of them removed their armour or loosened their cloaks. The race of mountain folk and the race of men were bound by powerful oaths, but neither sought out the company of the other. As alike as they were in basic form, there remained—and would always remain—a gulf of understanding between them. Common cause had brought them together, and but for a number of rare instances, few men and dwarfs would count themselves as friends.
Sigmar moved through the campsite, taking the time to stop at each fire and exchange words with the men gathered around it. He knew every man’s name, and though he was exhausted by the time he sat at the fire with Wenyld, Cuthwin, Leodan, Teon and Gorseth, he knew the effort had been worthwhile. The talk around the other fires was animated, and good-natured banter flowed between the men instead of dark muttering and fearful speculation of what tomorrow might bring.
‘Another long day,’ said Cuthwin, as Sigmar sat down.
‘They’re only going to get longer. Alaric says these are just the foothills of the Vaults.’
‘Dwarf humour or dwarf understatement?’ asked Wenyld.
‘The first, I hope,’ said Sigmar, loosening the cords binding his boots and flexing his feet with a relieved sigh. Seeing the men around the fire grinning, Sigmar said, ‘Even Emperors get blisters sometimes.’
‘Even from horseback?’ said Cuthwin, passing Sigmar as bowl of hot oats and goats’ milk. The milk was starting to turn, but Sigmar didn’t mind. A warm meal at the end of a day’s travel did more to restore spirits than anything else, but Sigmar knew they would need to catch Krell soon before lack of supplies forced them to turn back.
They ate their food slowly, letting the aches and pains of the day ease out in the heat and companionable silence. Leodan passed a leather-wrapped bottle around the fire, a powerful Taleuten liquor distilled from grain and root vegetables. Sigmar took the first drink, and Cuthwin and Wenyld gratefully accepted one also. Teon and Gorseth each took a mouthful, and both coughed and retched at the taste of the powerful spirit.
Leodan smiled and said, ‘It’s an acquired taste, lad, but it’ll keep you snug in your bed through a long, cold night.’
‘Not too snug,’ warned Sigmar, as Leodan took another long mouthful. ‘Alaric’s dwarfs are taking the first watch, but we’ll be taking our turn too.’
Leodan shrugged and put the bottle away with a sour look, as the rest of Sigmar’s warriors made themselves as comfortable as they could. With only their saddle blankets between them and the rocky ground, it was going to be a long night. Sigmar arranged his saddle for a pillow before pulling his furs over him.
He closed his eyes, and sleep stole upon him almost instantly.
Sigmar woke with the first touch of chill in the air, a deeper cold than simply that of the mountains. This was a cold that only emanated from beyond the portals of Morr, the breath that accompanies those unquiet souls who do not pass through the god of the dead’s halls to their final rest. His eyes snapped open, and he rolled from his furs with Ghal-maraz leaping to his hand. The rune hammer glimmered with corposant, the bound magics that were inimical to the dead sparkling like snowflakes in a fire.
‘To arms!’ shouted Sigmar. ‘Up! Up!’
Not a soul moved, his men resting where he had left them. The horses stood as still as the carved horses at the end of Lancer Bridge over the Reik, their eyes glassy and lifeless.
‘Up, damn you!’ roared Sigmar, delivering his commands with a boot to hasten his men awake. They grunted and rolled over in their sleep, but did not awaken. Sigmar saw that even Alaric’s dwarfs were still slumbering, and knew that some fell enchantment was at work.
‘Ulric’s bones, get up!’ shouted Sigmar, kneeling beside Cuthwin and shaking the huntsman violently.
‘He can’t he
ar you, son of Björn, no one can,’ said a rasping voice from the darkness.
‘Show yourself, damn you!’ demanded Sigmar, turning to try and pinpoint the sound.
‘In time, but for now it would be best for you if you kept silent. Yes, silent would be good. Your men and the stunted ones were easy, but you have will that is not easily hidden.’
‘What have you done to them?’ cried Sigmar. ‘Are they dead?’
‘Always so loud, you heroes,’ said the voice. ‘I’m not deaf, and neither are they.’
‘Answer me, damn you!’
‘Of course they’re not dead, dung-for-brains. Look, they still breathe. Their chests still rise and fall and warm air still blows from their lungs.’
‘Come out of the shadows, you coward! Face me!’
‘Face you? Don’t be ridiculous,’ laughed the voice. ‘Would I go to all this trouble just for you to bludgeon me with that hammer of yours? Now be silent, son of Björn. I mean you no harm, but they do! Look behind you, Sigmar Heldenhammer, and find yourself a place to remain silent and still!’
Sigmar cooled his temper towards this invisible speaker, angry at being so manipulated, but as he heard the tramp of marching feet from below, he could still recognise the lesser of two evils. Sigmar ghosted silently to the narrow portion of the thin plateau on which he and his men were resting. Far below, but climbing rapidly, was a seething host of creatures, though Sigmar had difficulty in determining exactly what they were.
The Legend of Sigmar Page 112
