Inferno Volume 2 - Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  Niara dragged the filthy, lice-ridden scraps of pelt about her shoulders. She hugged herself tight. The warmth from the fire never quite reached the cages. It certainly did little to upset the icicles clinging to the cavern roof. But the wind got everywhere. That was how Loth had died. Curled up to sleep, never to wake.

  That had been what, twelve days back? Fifteen? Despite her earlier words, Niara had lost track of time. She measured passage by the dead. Kurt, Wennel, Markin, Dag, Sleever, Loth… a dozen more. Those who’d survived the ambush in the Pass of Jaws, slain for the ogors’ entertainment. Just her and Horst left. It was fitting, in its way. She and Horst had entered the Concordia guard together, escaping a ­scrabbled life in the gutters. Three years on the wall, Horst ever teetering on the brink of dismissal while she had earned a sergeant’s bars. Together to the end. The vagabond and the rising star.

  Most other cages were empty. The last of the aelves, Methrin, had died that morning. Besides Niara herself, that left three: Horst, Bragga and Valruss.

  The ogors’ sport was running thin.

  ‘For shame. You’ve saved none for me.’

  Niara allowed herself a weary smile at the gruff mutter. Bragga stood unmoving in her cage. Her bare, stocky arms were folded, her gaze fixed firmly on the door. At least, Niara assumed that to be the case. The ogors had stripped the duardin’s armour away when they had dragged her from her crashed sky-ship. She’d gnawed a crude mask from a scrap of pelt to cover her features from chin to brow. A point of honour, or so she said.

  ‘Thought you Kharadrons didn’t believe in charity. Thought you had a code.’

  ‘The code? ’Tis stricture and guidance for well-fed mercenaries, not prisoners with echoing bellies.’ Bragga shrugged. Fire-cast shadows rippled across her leather tunic, setting etched runes dancing. The long, bloody scab on her left forearm – a memento of her most recent turn in the fighting pit – glinted wetly. ‘It might yet be that Valruss honours a duarkvinn by sparing her a morsel.’

  It took Niara a moment to wrap her ears around the mix of guttural duardin and accented Freeguilder. ‘He’s in the fighting pit already?’

  Of course he was. The cage to her right was empty. She had walked straight past him and never known, lost in a fog of victory and numbing cold. She clambered to her feet and peered out.

  True enough, the broad-shouldered warrior stood with his back to the fighting pit’s portcullis arch, more statue than man. The battered mace that was his favoured weapon sat planted between his feet. Greying black hair twitched with every gust of wind. He stood otherwise immobile, without a flicker of the apprehension he had to be feeling.

  ‘You’re dreaming, skyborn.’ Horst licked his fingers. He stared regretfully at the now-clean length of bone in his hands. ‘Grimbody’s only out for himself. Reminds me of a priest I knew.’

  Niara ignored the veiled insult. Horst had despised Valruss from the start, though the hatred seemed irrational to her. Perhaps it arose from the larger man’s imperturbable attitude. Sigmar knew Horst lacked for one of those.

  She kept her eyes on the fighting pit. On the gate opposite the prisoners’ cave. The beast-gate, where the ogors kept their pets. ‘I thought you didn’t have a past?’

  Horst tossed the bone aside. ‘Oh, I’ve a past before this place. Remember it like yesterday, I do. Because it was. Don’t let anyone tell you different.’

  Niara shook her head. Horst’s peculiar sense of humour had seen him brought up on plenty of charges over the years. More than one officer had accused him of living in a world that bore only tangential connection to whatever counted as ‘real’. But now? Since their capture, it had been one dry, cynical jibe after another – sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes not – played for an audience that wasn’t laughing. She’d given up calling him out on it.

  A drunken bellow issued from the fighting pit. The beast-gate creaked open. A gangling, wart-encrusted creature shambled into view. It was human-shaped, if not of human proportions: ferociously ugly, with tattered flaps for ears and ridged, sinewy limbs.

  Niara caught her breath. A troggoth. Seemed the ogors had tired of watching Valruss slaughter wolves, frost sabres and the like. They didn’t want a fight. They wanted Valruss to die.

  The troggoth rushed forward. A raucous cheer sounded as the chain about its neck went taut. The brute roared and strained. The chain creaked, but held.

  ‘Don’t look much like Valruss’ll be sharing much with anyone,’ muttered Horst. ‘Going to miss his sparkling conversation.’

  ‘Quiet!’ snapped Niara. She wondered why she bothered. Horst was right. In all the time they’d been fellow captives, Valruss had barely spoken a dozen words to her beyond his name. To any of them, far as she knew. He was as quiet as Horst was not.

  The chain tore free of its mooring, or was set loose – Niara couldn’t see. With a ragged roar that challenged the tumult of the crowd, the troggoth barrelled towards Valruss.

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Move yerself, grimbody!’ Horst gripped the bars, ambivalence forgotten.

  Bragga grunted. ‘Thought you didn’t care?’

  ‘I don’t.’ His grip tightened, all the same.

  The troggoth’s knuckles dragged against the frozen ground as it picked up speed. Drool splashed from slavering lips and steamed in the snow.

  Valruss snatched up the mace and swung an arcing, double-handed blow.

  The troggoth skidded, claws scraping on ice. The mace struck. The troggoth lurched, its expression more confused than pained. Shards of splintered teeth spattered the snow. Valruss, moving swifter than a man his size ought, stepped aside. The troggoth struck the ground with a muffled thud. The fighting pit fell silent.

  A spill of sonorous – but gleeful – duardin burst from beneath Bragga’s mask. Niara found herself cheering. No words, just unfettered emotion. She’d seen him fight before, but she never tired of it. The man had been born to the battlefield.

  ‘Ain’t done yet,’ said Horst sourly. ‘My old ma said that troggoths regrow missing limbs. It’ll laugh that off. You’ll see.’

  Valruss swung the mace down in a whistling, overhead blow. Once. Twice. On the third strike, Niara heard a dull crack. On the fifth, the troggoth’s head mulched like a palefruit.

  Bragga laughed. ‘A strike worthy of Grungni’s hammer. That wazzok won’t rise.’

  Satisfied, Valruss tossed the mace aside.

  Before long, he was back in the cage between Niara and Bragga, the tails of his tattered blue cloak wrapped around ragged tunic and trews, and a hunk of meat from the tyrant’s table in his hand.

  Niara nodded in greeting. ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘Impressed! Impressed?’ Horst flung an agitated hand towards the fighting pit. ‘Too cursed quick is what it was. What if they send another of us out there? I ain’t fighting a blasted troggoth!’

  Suddenly, Niara was tired of his voice. ‘Enough, Horst.’

  Valruss gave no sign of having heard either of them.

  In the event, no one else fought that day. The fighting pit fell empty and silent. Niara’s fellow captives found what ease they could – no easy business in cramped cages – while their gaoler laboured over a simmering cauldron.

  Horst passed the time in fitful sleep. Bragga, as was her wont, stood facing the door to her cage. Sometimes it seemed to Niara that the duardin slept standing up. Maybe she did, but not at that moment – not unless she sang softly in her sleep. The melody smoothed the harsh edges of her words and set them sparkling like gemstones.

  Valruss knelt in the centre of his cage, eyes closed and palms on his knees, motionless save for the gentle swell of his chest and the twitching bristles of his beard. Last night Methrin had still been with them, muttering away, begging for salvation from his distant gods. Niara wondered which of them would be gone tomorrow.

  For herself, Nia
ra couldn’t sleep. She’d been cursed that way as long as she could recall. Too long standing night watch at Concordia gate, she supposed. A body got used to it after a while.

  Instead, she tried to recall her life before the cage. Names and faces swam in her memory, familiar and yet indistinct. Names perched forever on the tip of recollection. The more she strove to focus on features, the faster they dissolved. Even her parents’ faces seemed distant. Lovers, too. Maybe Horst was right to treat each day as the first. It was kinder that way. She’d been too long in the cage. Weeks. Maybe even months. Waiting to fight, waiting to die. It had become her life.

  She longed for thunder. For the proof that Sigmar was near. None came.

  Hours after snow-chased dusk faded into night, the gaoler at last turned from the cauldron and dropped a wooden bowl outside each cage. The day’s rations, such as they were.

  ‘Food,’ he rumbled, tongue clotting on the unfamiliar word.

  Duty done, he clutched a fifth, larger bowl and ambled out of the cave. The portcullis rattled down behind him.

  Niara dragged her bowl through the bars. The greyish-brown gloop commended little to sight, but to smell…? If she’d learned one thing, it was that ogor cooking tasted even better than it smelled. The brutes weren’t entirely without art.

  She fished a lump of meat out of the stew. Her stomach rumbled.

  ‘Don’t eat it,’ hissed Horst. ‘For all you know, that’s Methrin floating in there.’

  Bragga belched. She ran a finger around the rim of her empty bowl and licked it clean.

  ‘’Tis not gamey enough to be aelf,’ she pronounced. ‘By the plentiful Ice Wind, but these ogri know how to cook troggoth.’

  Horst stared at his bowl with a fraction more disgust. ‘You eat troggoth back in Barak Skarren?’

  Bragga shrugged. ‘Only a fool finds profit in an empty stomach.’

  In truth, Niara’s own appetite had abated with the mystery’s resolution. But practicality won out. Rations were thin enough. That it tasted every bit as good as she’d expected only made it worse. When she was halfway done, Horst made inroads into his own meal. Valruss’ bowl was already empty, his meditations renewed.

  ‘No, no.’ Bragga tilted her head to one side in thought. ‘I’m in grave error. That is elgi.’

  Horst spat a mouthful of stew across his cage. Niara’s stomach lurched. Bragga chuckled.

  ‘Harden your heart, manling. I’ve not eaten elgi.’ She folded her arms and lowered her voice. ‘But by Grungni’s Beard, I’d do so if it’d see me out of this place.’

  Horst wiped his mouth. ‘Ain’t no way out.’

  ‘Sure there is. Portcullis is open during a fight.’

  He scowled. ‘Open onto a fighting pit full of ogors.’

  ‘A fighting pit full of drunken ogors,’ Niara corrected. ‘Even sober they are slow-witted. One alone doesn’t stand a chance, but if we stick together, we might just fight our way out.’

  ‘Say that’s true,’ said Horst. ‘We have to get out of these cages. How do you answer that?’

  Bragga crouched and fished beneath the scraps of matted fur at the base of her cage. Steel gleamed in the dying firelight. The broken tip of a sword, no more than four inches long.

  ‘Found this in the fighting pit yesterday. Scrap, it may be, but I’ll warrant it holds enough of an edge to slit the bindings on the bars.’

  ‘How did you get that in here?’ Niara’s pulse quickened. Maybe this was possible.

  The duardin’s fingers danced across her forearm, against the wound that Niara now realised wasn’t a just a wound, but a sheath of bloody flesh in which the blade had lain concealed.

  ‘The search was lacking,’ said Bragga, ‘and my need severe.’

  Horst let out a low whistle. ‘That’s… revolting.’

  ‘It will be no small labour, but I can loosen enough bars to get out. A steady hand and careful eye are necessary, lest the cage entire clatters apart. Fortunately, a duarkvinn has both.’ She tapped at the base of a bar, and nodded thoughtfully. ‘A night of toil, and I shall be free. Maybe one other at my side. But if we’re all to be out of this place, someone has to keep our gaoler’s eye tomorrow. That task falls to whoever goes into the fighting pit first.’

  Niara nodded. There was no way to know who’d go in first. Best case was it’d be someone whose cage hadn’t yet been broken. ‘I can do that, if they come for me. Horst?’

  ‘What if we’re caught? More than that, what if we’re not? Where do we go?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ Niara replied flatly. ‘There is nothing for us here but death. At least we’ll have a fighting chance on the mountainside. Who knows, we might even make it back to Concordia.’

  ‘’Tis a breach of accord to say as much, but a Barak Skarren trade route runs a few leagues westward,’ said Bragga. ‘If we’re bold enough to make it that far, you can barter passage home.’

  Horst scowled. ‘If the ogors don’t run us down first. They’ve cages full of hunting beasts, you know that. They’ll be on our heels.’

  ‘And how will you outrun them in the arena?’ said Niara. ‘If this is merely a choice between the ways of death, I’ll choose one where I’m free. Do you have a better idea? Chances are you’re dying in the fighting pit anyway. How much longer do you think you will last?’

  He flinched. ‘I don’t like it.’

  Niara bit away a flash of anger. Their numbers were slim as it was. ‘I’m not asking you if you like it. I’m ordering you to come.’

  He stiffened. ‘Glad to follow you into death.’

  She smiled. ‘As you should be. Valruss, are you in?’

  ‘No.’ He spoke without opening his eyes.

  ‘No?’ she hissed. ‘What do you mean, “no”?’

  ‘I have no intention of leaving. You may do as you wish.’

  And just like that, they were down to three. Bragga raised the lower lip of her mask and spat on the floor. Horst sank back against the bars of his cage.

  ‘Called it,’ he muttered. ‘Grimbody’s only out for himself.’

  Niara glared at Valruss, and dredged deep in her soul for words to change his mind. But a man who calmly faced down a raging troggoth was not a man to be swayed by bluster, and she didn’t know what it would take. Where had he come from? His accent did not hail from Concordia, nor from any place she knew… Though something about it was familiar, all the same. All she knew was that he had been here before her – before Bragga had been dragged from the wreckage of her sky-ship some weeks before. Maybe that was how he had lasted so long, by fighting when called to, and not getting involved in any damn-fool escapes.

  She shook her head. The Dark Gods take him, anyway.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she said instead. ‘But we’re still going.’

  Niara jerked awake at the thunder-crack. She had dozed off. Pulse quickening, she scrabbled amongst the blankets for the precious scrap of steel. Bragga would kill her if she lost it.

  Fingers closed on metal. Relief flooded in. She glanced at Bragga’s cage. The duardin stood in her customary position. Awake or asleep, she’d said nothing since she’d pressed the broken blade into Niara’s hand and clambered by into her gimmicked cage. The soft ripple of Horst’s snores washing over her, Niara wrapped one end of the steel in the blanket, and went back to sawing.

  Thunder rumbled. The storm was getting closer. She peered up at the cave roof, and wished she could see the lightning.

  ‘You are afeared of the thunder?’

  Valruss’ eyes flickered open as he spoke. He otherwise remained unmoving, knelt in his meditative position.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘It gives me hope. Sigmar is in the storm.’

  He shook his head, crow’s feet in his skin reshaping into a maybe-smile. ‘So that is how you have kept your fire. You believe the God-King will sweep down from the
heavens on a lightning bolt. That he will smite your salvation on the mountainside?’

  Niara bristled. ‘No. Why would he bother with a handful of souls? But he might send his Stormcasts.’

  A soft chuckle. ‘And what do you know of the Stormcasts?’

  That was harder. She’d seen a chamber of Stormcast Eternals once, when they had fetched victory out of massacre at Rockfallow Gorge. Only from a distance, though. But what she knew went far beyond what she’d seen. Faith did that.

  ‘They’re heroes,’ she said. ‘They are salvation.’

  Valruss scowled. ‘Heroes fall. And salvation is better claimed than sought.’

  Niara stopped sawing at the hide and fixed him with a withering stare. ‘Then claim it. Fight with us tomorrow. We need you.’

  ‘No. I am already where I belong.’

  She spat her disgust. The other’s fatalism struck a poor chord with his calm demeanour. ‘A rat in a cage? Why’s it so important you stay?’

  ‘Why is it so important you leave?’

  ‘Because I’ve a duty, that’s why. I swore to Sigmar that I’d fight for those who couldn’t.’ That detail shone true in uncertain memory. ‘I will choose death with a sword in my hand over any other.’

  ‘Duty begs you to go. It commands that I atone for surviving where my brothers and sisters did not. Only then will I be worthy of the storm.’

  Worthy of the storm? His earlier words echoed back with fresh resonance. Heroes fall. ‘You’re a… Stormcast? No! They’re heroes who ride the lightning, not apostates in grubby garb and tattered cloaks.’

  If Valruss took any offence, none showed in his face. ‘Never confuse the armour with the warrior within. The armour is divine. The warrior is flesh. And flesh is… fallible.’

  Disgusted, Niara returned to her sawing. ‘Keep your lies to yourself. The Stormcasts are perfection. The chosen of Sigmar.’

  ‘Proclamation is not truth. To be a hero is to strive. Nothing more. It is certainly not perfection.’ One eye narrowed. ‘You named me Stormcast. Why?’

  Niara shook her head, angry at herself as much as Valruss. Why had she? The man had the physique to be one of Sigmar’s chosen – and the battle-skill, sure enough. More than that, the title fitted him in a way she couldn’t explain. As if she’d glimpsed beneath the torn raiment. Or maybe she was weary… too weary to argue.