‘Say I believe you. You should be out in the world, fighting for a glorious age of light…’
She broke off. If Valruss was what he claimed to be – what she believed him to be – she should be respectful… even afraid. Could that cage even hold him, if he wished otherwise?
For the first time, emotion marred Valruss’ expression. Not the anger Niara had feared, but an abiding hollowness. ‘My host – the Knights Tempestor – fought at the forefront of the Realmgate Wars until the Dark Gods sent their greatest sorcerer against us.’
He paused. A scowl of recollection flitted across his lips. ‘I slew him too late. His conjuration slaughtered my brothers and sisters. Of the host, only I survived. I awoke on this mountainside, armour blackened and melting away. Alone. Even now, my memory lies in tatters. Wisps and fragments of might-have-beens. But I know that my fellows are gone. I fear their spirits are lost, that they never regained the solace of Azyrheim and were drawn into the Dark Gods’ embrace. It is my fault that it is so.’
Niara glanced around the cave. At the emptiness that was an accusation of her failure. So many dead. The patrol she’d led into the ambush was gone, all save her and Horst. For the first time she felt a kinship with Valruss, bleak though it was.
‘I’ve lost comrades too…’
He growled. ‘You dare compare your loss to mine? My kith should have been reborn, forged anew at Sigmar’s hand. Now they are dust, my punishment is to suffer. Why else would Sigmar have sent me to this place?’ With visible effort, he regathered his composure. ‘I am to shed my blood until I am forgiven.’
Niara decided ogors were an odd path to enlightenment, but elected against saying so. Be he madman or Stormcast, she would gain little by offending Valruss.
‘And how will you know when you are forgiven?’ she asked instead.
‘Sigmar will send me a sign.’
‘And what if we’re that sign? Maybe Sigmar wants you to join us.’
He laughed softly. ‘No. Sigmar is many things, but he is not subtle in his wishes. The sign I seek will not be mistaken.’
Valruss closed his eyes. The first murky rays of dawn glimmered at the cave mouth. Niara swore under her breath, and redoubled her efforts with the blade.
The gaoler did not come at dawn, nor for many long hours after. For Niara, this was all to the good, for the bindings on her cage were tougher than she’d believed possible. But with perseverance – and no small cost to herself in sliced fingers – the last strip tore free as the portcullis rumbled open. She hurriedly thrust the precious scrap of steel through the bars into Horst’s hand and awaited the gaoler’s selection. Whose suffering would buy time for the escape?
The ogor peered myopically from one cage to the next. Then, decision made, he rumbled forward and yanked aside the door to Niara’s cage. She shared a brief nod with Horst, and followed the gaoler’s beckoning hand.
A raucous cheer greeted her arrival in the fighting pit. It fell swiftly away beneath the tyrant’s rambling, stentorian address. The first bout was always the tardiest for that very reason. Niara normally hated the delay. Fear festered, and the cold sapped what little vigour remained. But today, every moment the tyrant rumbled on was a moment she would not have to buy. If only they’d taken Horst for the fighting pit, and not her. There would be no bonds to cut, and no need for delay.
She stooped, reclaiming the short sword she’d used the previous day. She glanced behind. The gaoler stood beneath the open portcullis, his attention on the fight to come. Good. That much was going to plan, at least.
After a cold, shivering age, the tyrant fell silent. The far gate creaked open, revealing a gangling, white-furred beast with black, ice-frosted claws. Twisted teeth parted in a hooting roar.
Niara’s heart sank. A yhetee. Large as a troggoth, but faster and quicker-witted to boot. Valruss could have killed it, but she? Bloody fur and scabbed limbs betrayed wounds already taken. Maybe it could be done. And besides, all she need do was survive until Horst was free.
Thunder rumbled across the sky. Niara raised her sword.
Eyes closed, Valruss sought peace in meditation. He blotted out the snarls of the yhetee. The guttural cheers of the crowd. The thunder. Niara’s screams of pain and challenge. She was not his sign. Not the sign of forgiveness.
Sigmar had shown him the path of penance, and that path lay in the carnage of the fighting pit. Not in escape. And certainly not in offering his fellows false hope of salvation. After all, who was to say they had not failed as he had? That Sigmar was not testing them all? Such tests were not to be passed, but endured until the dawn of divine mercy, or strength failed.
So why did he feel otherwise? Why did he feel a kinship? Why had he spoken so freely of his burdens? He had not in all his years as a captive. Sooner or later, everyone died. Attachment to fellow captives gained nothing.
A harsh, wooden clatter dragged Valruss from his musings.
‘Oh, crask.’
Horst stood frozen in place, his grasping hand extended almost comically as the heartfelt curse spilled from his lips. A wooden bar from his cage tottered back and forth on the rock floor.
In the cave mouth, the gaoler lurched about. Bellowing in outrage, he lumbered towards Horst’s cage, cudgel readied.
‘Kazak bryngadum!’
Bars clattered as Bragga barrelled out of her cage. Snaring a burning brand from the fire, she hurled herself at the gaoler and thrust the glowing timber up at his face. The ogor’s roar of pain drowned out the sound of sizzling flesh.
Horst slashed. Broken steel glinted. Blood welled on the ogor’s forearm.
The brute flailed, striking Bragga from her feet. The cudgel smashed down. The arcing sweep ended in a meaty thud and a crack of breaking bone.
‘I’ll have you for that!’
Horst slashed again, this time at the ogor’s belly. The blade snagged on the filthy apron. As he drew back for a second stroke, the gaoler backhanded him across the face. Stunned, Horst fell across the bars of his cage. The ogor’s hand closed around his throat.
The gaoler spared no glance for the lifeless duardin. A struggling Horst still dangling from his grip, he lumbered towards the cave mouth.
Valruss watched until they had crossed the threshold. Would Horst find the strength to endure? To continue penance for sins Valruss could only guess at? Perhaps. Either way, Sigmar would wish no intervention. Valruss closed his eyes once more, and sought elusive peace.
Niara screamed as she rammed the sword home. The yhetee, every bit as bloodied and weary as she, screeched. Rusty steel punched through matted fur, glanced off a rib and plunged deep into the creature’s heart.
With a mournful, keening wail, the yhetee fell. Niara barely made it out from beneath its stinking, smothering bulk in time. The crowd roared approval.
Heart pounding, she fell to one knee. Her left arm – her broken left arm – throbbed with an insistence that promised worse to come once the glamour of battle faded. The side of her face was slick with her own blood, and her right ankle ground whenever she set weight upon it. And that was before she took account of the dozen or so gashes from the yhetee’s claws.
She had survived, but she had failed. She’d had to end the fight before Horst and Bragga had freed themselves.
The gaoler emerged from the cave with an indignant bellow. The ogor’s face was blistered and raw. A struggling Horst dangled from his grip.
The crowd fell silent. On the balcony above, the tyrant rose to his feet and rumbled a question. The gaoler jabbed his cudgel back at the cave mouth. A booming back-and-forth began between the two ogors. Freed from the gaoler’s grip, Horst scrambled on hands and knees to Niara’s side and helped her stand.
‘Are you all right?’ she gasped.
He rubbed his neck and grabbed a short-handled mace from the ground. ‘Damn near popped my head off. Otherwise, yeah.�
�
‘Bragga?’
Horst shook his head. Niara felt a pang of loss. Maybe you couldn’t trust a Kharadron unless your coin was good. Didn’t mean you couldn’t like one.
‘Valruss?’
Horst snorted. ‘Grimbody watched, and did nothing. As usual.’
‘You know he told me he was a Stormcast?’
‘No such thing as Stormcast. Told you before.’
‘You have not.’
The ogors’ conversation fell silent. The gaoler withdrew. Timber creaked as the tyrant made his way down the shallow stairs to the fighting pit floor. It was only now that Niara realised how truly massive the brute was – an avalanche of armoured fat and slabbed muscle come to bury her alive. Thunder rumbled fitfully, like the growl of a watchdog that hadn’t yet roused itself to the challenge, but was giving the matter serious thought.
‘Don’t suppose he’s setting us free.’
Niara sighed. Spikes of pain shot through her chest. ‘What do you think?’
The tyrant halted a dozen paces in front of them. He hoisted the ironstone maul aloft. The haft looked like a toothpick in his hands. The crowd roared approval.
‘I think we’ve upset him,’ muttered Horst. ‘You hang back. You can barely stand.’
Niara straightened. ‘Damned if I will.’
The tyrant lumbered forward, maul back-swung and ready to strike. Niara and Horst shared one last nod, and charged.
Unburdened by a lumpen ankle, Horst reached the ogor first. The air screamed as the ironstone maul came about. Horst skidded in the snow, half turning as he fell. The killing blow swept over his head. Horst rolled to his feet. His mace cracked against the tyrant’s armoured knee.
Might as well have struck the mountain itself, all the good it did.
Niara joined the fray, striking from the tyrant’s left as he lumbered to crush the upstart Horst to his right. Thick furs cheated her first strike. The second slipped beneath his corroded gut-plate and drew blood.
Enraged, the tyrant spun about. The maul whirled, the sound of it lost beneath the rising storm.
‘Move it!’
Suddenly Horst was at her side. His shoulder rammed Niara clear. She sprawled to the ground. Agony flared bright as broken bones ground together.
The tyrant’s blow took Horst full in the chest. A sound of snapping ribs like branches broken underfoot, and he spiralled away. His pulped body struck the timber bounds of the fighting pit and lay unmoving in the bloody snow. If he had screamed, it was swallowed by the thunderclap.
Niara crawled onto one knee. Her sword arm shook with cold and exhaustion. The tyrant’s rough laughter washed over her. The crowd cheered. Thunder rumbled, closer than ever before. So close she felt it in her bones. So close she could almost embrace it.
The tyrant raised his maul.
Thunder roared. Niara dropped her sword, and let it swallow her whole.
Light blazed in the darkness of Valruss’ meditation. The sizzling, roiling crack sounded a heartbeat later. A rush of sharp, sweet air flooded his lungs. Achingly familiar and longed for, all at once. Like coming home after a long journey, or setting out anew with strong stride.
He opened his eyes. Fire raged beyond the cave, the fighting pit’s mistreated timbers set alight by the lightning strike. Wind howled beyond, whipping the flames to a flurry of smoke and fury. An unnatural tempest as familiar as the lightning itself. And something else. Not words. Not even a voice. But a presence as familiar to Valruss as his grief-born burdens. One so long desired he wept as it touched his thoughts.
He remembered that feeling from long ago, from before the armour and duties of a Stormcast had claimed him. But the presence had not come for him. It barely acknowledged his existence. He was unworthy. It had come for another. One worth saving.
One worth saving. Niara’s penance was done, if it had ever existed. She did not belong here. She did not deserve his fate.
Seized of a purpose he had not felt in long years, Valruss gripped the bars of his cage.
Niara staggered to her feet as the fighting pit collapsed around her. Soot stung her eyes and clogged her lungs with the sour tang of roasting flesh. Snow hissed into the rising flames. The wind plucked at her tattered clothes, but otherwise let her be, as if she stood in the eye of her own personal storm. Of the tyrant, she saw no sign. The lightning strike had hurled him away. The fire hid all else.
Piece by wretched piece, the storm tore the fighting pit apart. High above Niara’s head, timber wrenched free and vanished into the tempest. A fluttering length of fur followed, then a section of planking.
An ogor plunged from the upper tiers and thudded into the fighting pit, his lifeless flesh already shrivelled and black where the fire took hold. Another succumbed at the balcony’s edge, his body blazing like a torch. Panicked roars and the thump of running feet echoed as the survivors sought safety. Niara saw only flame and the starburst of black ash at her feet.
Thunder shook the sky. Taking heart from the sound, Niara limped towards where she had last seen the stairway. She had to risk the fire. To stay in the fighting pit was to die.
The flames surged. A dark shape lumbered out of the conflagration, roaring in anger and pain. The tyrant’s furs and beard were ablaze. His seared face glistened like molten wax. But the maul was still in his hand.
He swung. Niara twisted. The ironstone head whistled inches past her face.
Oblivious to the pain, the tyrant came on.
Thud. The tyrant staggered and lashed out behind. Valruss strode out of the smoke, long-hafted mace gripped tight. With a wordless grunt, he swung at the ogor’s head, driving him back.
The maul came about once more. Valruss darted back. When the blow passed, he struck knee and gut, and then at the head once more.
Blood crackling into his blazing furs, the tyrant cast his maul aside. When Valruss next swung, the mace was wrenched from his grasp. The tyrant snarled in triumph.
As Niara watched in horror, the ogor gathered Valruss into a bear hug. Strong though Valruss was, he was no more than a child beside the tyrant’s bulk. Horror crystallised into determination, and determination into action.
Niara snatched up her sword. Tucking it in close, she levelled the blade like a lance and threw herself at the ogor as fast as her buckled ankle could bear.
Steel thunked into flesh, slicing cleanly between the ogor’s ribs. The tyrant roared anew. A flailing arm struck her away, the sword still in his back. Already off balance, Niara landed awkwardly. She cried out as her wounded ankle gave way with the sound of a snapping bough.
Valruss prised himself free of the single arm that now held him. Rolling clear of the tyrant’s attempt to snare him, he ripped the sword free and thrust.
The tyrant’s roar died with him, the sword buried in his throat.
Her vision dimmed by pain, Niara barely saw the ogor fall. Even the wind seemed distant, its fury spent alongside her own. But the fire raged stronger than ever.
‘Leave me,’ she told the approaching Valruss. ‘I can’t walk.’
‘You have no need to,’ he replied, and gathered her up across his shoulders.
Valruss stared out across the mountainside. The distant ogor camp was but a dull orange glow against the deepening dusk, half hidden by the blizzard and the trees. He saw no sign of pursuit. That would come later, if any had survived the fire. By then, the snow would have covered their tracks. Or so he hoped.
Turning his back on the mountainside, he retreated deeper into the narrow cave. Niara sat before a small fire, her broken bones splinted and bound.
‘Well?’ she asked.
‘We are safe. For now.’
She nodded, wincing as the motion tugged on wounded flesh. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘I am a poor steward of salvation. You must look elsewhere.’
She n
odded. ‘I know it wasn’t just your doing. Sigmar sent the lightning, and the storm.’
Valruss nodded, though that was not what he had meant.
Should he tell her? That the lightning was portent as much as liberator, a sign that Niara was marked for greatness – perhaps even ascension to the ranks of the Stormcast Eternals themselves? A noble life – even a necessary one – but it was not his to reveal. He who had broken from his penance in a moment of weakness. The thought of that failure yawned wide in his soul.
Or… had Sigmar meant for him to act? To shepherd a worthy soul from an unworthy fate? Had penance become redemption? Was he at last worthy of Azyrheim’s golden spires once more? The fellowship of his brothers and sisters?
He grimaced and discarded the thought as the fantasy of a weak heart. It was in the nature of portents to reveal what the witness most desired, and the nature of the desperate to cling to what they saw. His penance was broken. He could not go back to how he was. There was only the path forward. The old war renewed in shame. That would suffice. It would have to.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sigmar saved you.’
Niara’s eyes narrowed. Her cheek twitched. ‘And he has forgiven you?’
He turned away. ‘The war against the Dark Gods goes on. I will be part of it again. But I will see you safe to Concordia first, so you may also play your part…’ He hesitated. ‘Whatever Sigmar wills that to be.’
So saying, he returned to the cave mouth, where he stood a long, lonely vigil until night fell.
THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 1
by Various authors
The Age of Chaos has been long and dark. The Mortal Realms are a brutal place, their people consigned to slavery and terror. But now a light has come. A storm breaks, and the God-King Sigmar’s celestial armies arrive to liberate the Realms. The Realmgate Wars have begun.
Inferno Volume 2 - Guy Haley Page 13
